• Craftwork Microentrepreneur,Cotonou 

  		This client of CFAD is a small entrepreneur who was in a very difficult financial situation. He went to CFAD, a start-up microfinance institution funded by FINADEV from scratch.His entreprise produces "grès cérame" and needed a short term loan to increase its production and pay its staff.CFAD gathered several loan demands of this sort and requested a loan from FINADEV. This was accepted and the microentrepreneur was granted a USD 600 loan for 9 months.Thanks to this loan he has just received an award from the craftwork authorities in Benin for the quality of its work.

• Fishermen's cooperative, Djègbadji
  
  This cooperative in the south of Benin is dedicated to selling food and small supplies to local fishermen. It has been set up to make the fishermen's daily life easier and bring closer and cheaper services. CFAD got funding from FINADEV to on-lend to this small cooperative. The USD 450 allowed the members to save a lot of time and expenses for transports and therefore created jobs for young fishermen.

• Globa refinancing, Cotonou and Porto-Novo

PADME is a famous MFI in Benin which needed commercial funding to continue its operations in Porto-Novo and Cotonou.

The General Manager of this MFI decided to ask FINADEV a 6 month refinancing to reach 3000 new clients in the country.

PADME had been recently given a good rating with the GIRAFE instrument by a PlaNet Finance consultant. FINADEV based its decision for lending on this particular evaluation and the good knowledge of the MFI.

As a consequence PADME got a USD 1,1 million from FINADEV for its operations.

In the same time PADME uses the Financial Bank branches in Porto-Novo and Cotonou for its own clients to be given their small loan and repay the installments at the FINADEV windows.

Farming in the center of Benin is a pretty hard job. Peasants have no electricity and do not often own their land and houses. They need money for agriculture to buy daily food for their families.

The CREPs (rural credit offices) needed to expand to new villages to on-lend to those poor farmers.

FINADEV granted a USD 180,000 to FENACREP (the Federation of CREPs) to on-lend to small farmers. Average loans do not exceed USD 80.

Thanks to this refinancing the CREPs granted loans to more than 2,200 farmers reaching actually more than 10,000 people living in real poverty in remote areas.

 

• Small female trader, Cotonou

  A female trader operates in one of the markets in Cotonou. This trader was prepared for the back- to-school period and had thus bought a huge amount of books, pencils and other small school supplies.

  When she came one night she saw its small shop had been visited by robbers and half of its stationery had been stolen.

  She had already been granted a first three month loan for the amount of USD 200 (so called "Akwe Kleun" meaning "small money" in a local language) and a second loan of USD 400 by FINADEV.

  Those loans had been repaid on time and she had obviously improved its shop and decrease its costs thanks to those microloans.

  She needed now a new help to face her bad situation. She obviously needed to get money and buy urgently new stationery to face the demand.

  Two days after she met with the FINADEV loan officer she got a USD 600 loan and was ready when her clients came to buy school stuff for their children. In the same time she decided to hire someboby to help her in her shop.

  Since 7 months 1,200 loans of this sort have been granted to female traders in the south of benin by FINADEV to improve trading and women's lives.

• Social loans, Benin

  A union of 700 salaried workers within a big semi state-owned firm operating in Benin came to Financial Bank to see if it was possible to get a gloabl two-year loan for the affiliated workers to improve their lives. They were working in different regions of Benin, often very far from the capital city. They needed an average USD 1000 individual loan which they could not get from a commercial bank given this small amount for an individual operation.

  Financial Bank decided to grant a social loan for USD 700,000 to the union and ask them to repay in only one transaction monthly for the whole group. The company organized the administrative procedure to help their staff put every thing in order.

  Thanks to this global social loan, the workers bought small lands or improved their houses. No delays in monthly repayments have been observed after 2 years, except for a few cases of death of staff which have been covered by a life insurance.

• Loans to small entreprises
  

  Microfinance for small entrepreneurs is often a real issue in Benin: they operate usually in the informal sector without financial statements or any projections. No commercial bank is interested in funding them due to lack of guarantee.

  FINADEV negociated with a donor to bring banking solutions to this part of the microfinance sector. A rotative fund was set up to on-lend to small entrepreneurs with a collaborative process for selecting the borrowers. FINADEV still keeps its banker's role in the screening of demands and final decision. In doing that FINADEV hopes encourage donors to use a banking approach to achieve a sustainable funding of informal productive sectors in developing countries.

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