| Microcredit Meltdown: The Rise and Fall of South Sudan's Post-conflict Microcredit Sector Contributor(s): Murphy, Crystal (Author) |
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ISBN: 1498577385 ISBN-13: 9781498577380 Publisher: Lexington Books OUR PRICE: $115.83 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: December 2018 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Political Science | International Relations - General - Business & Economics | Economics - General - Business & Economics | Finance - General |
| Dewey: 332.743 |
| LCCN: 2018042642 |
| Physical Information: 0.8" H x 6.2" W x 9.1" (1.00 lbs) 270 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Established to help people jumpstart their lives and economy after over a half century of conflict, the South Sudanese microcredit sector collapsed in 2012, six years after its takeoff, to the detriment of some 80,000 participants. Microcredit Meltdown is an account of the ambitious launch and premature downfall of the Southern Sudanese microcredit industry. Through a mixed methods ethnographic approach, the book charts the state and non-state actors that embarked upon economic development after war, the assumptions built into microlending, and the impact of ideologies and social norms on economic practice. The text compares industry theories with the experiences of borrowers and finds that microcredit failed in South Sudan due to false assumptions that were inapplicable to this post-conflict environment. Yet the over promising and under-delivering commercial microcredit was not isolated to South Sudan or even post-conflict settings. The Juba microcredit story is an instance of the broader global shift toward the commercial microcredit model. Initiated to get badly needed capital into the hands of poor people, instead the focus became sustaining a lending program. The text shows how the ideological and material constraints of the commercial microcredit paradigm were woefully misaligned with local socio-cultural realities, and created the collapse in South Sudan. |