Author Archives: estherchou

The past two months have flown by here. I orig­i­nally planned to come here to inde­pen­dently research Kenya’s micro­fi­nance landscape—seeking to under­stand how Kenyans, both in rural areas and in the slums of Nairobi, use rotat­ing sav­ings and cred­its asso­ci­a­tions (ROSCAs) and accu­mu­lat­ing sav­ings and credit asso­ci­a­tions (ASCAs) to man­age their finances— rather than the MFIs in the coun­try. But then while co-oping in China and think­ing about my expe­ri­ences at Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, I decided I wanted to learn more about approaches to income devel­op­ment beyond increas­ing access to finan­cial resources.