WE ARE NOT ABLE TO LIVE IN THE SKY

A keen examination of the rise and fall in popularity of the microfinance loan system.

The concept of microfinance—which provides loan and banking services to poor populations that would normally be unable to access such services—was the brainchild of Muhammad Yunus, the Bangladeshi economist who won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. However, as Kardas-Nelson, a journalist focused on international development and inequality, shows, the idea isn’t as win-win as it seems on the surface. While some recipients have benefited, others have ended up drowning in debt or jailed for failure to repay. In 2019 in Homa Bay, Kenya, two dozen people died by suicide. “Every single one,” writes the author, “had something in common: they had recently defaulted on their microcredit loans.” In her penetrating investigation, Kardas-Nelson follows a handful of loan recipients in West Africa, in addition to the mostly well-meaning executives, policymakers, and investors chasing the dream of changing a country’s destiny by doling out small loans to “the poorest of the poor.” The heartstring-tugging stories of Western advertising firms and banks jumping into the fray looking to make some cash are striking, but the real meat of the book is the absorbing tales of the yogurt seller, jewelry maker, and women living in grinding, exhausting poverty. Most of them, the author argues, would have been better off with a living-wage job, rather than trying to maintain precarious self-employment. Ultimately, the pros and cons of microfinance require further exploration and more long-term data, but Kardas-Nelson offers an evenhanded, instructive account of where things stand today. “Women are terrified of the loans and their consequences,” she notes near the end of the book. “And they are also terrified of life without them.”

This thoughtful deep dive into the world of microfinance is both educative and heartbreaking.