De downside van microkredieten

Door Pius Sawa, freelance journalist in Oost-Afrika

With the introduction of currency coins and notes, people have to have money inorder to buy goods and services. However, the majority of the rural populations dont have hardy cash and therefore have to servive by other means.
For one to buy sugar, he/she has to get a few eggs from her chickens and give it to the shopkeeper. To harvest or cultivate a piece of land, local brew is made and after work, the people will drink as a form of payment. School fees is paid with either cattle, or a number of sacks of maize or beans or a family will work for the school and the children will study.
On the border point of Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, people exchange food crops with textile.
This is how Africans in East Africa especially the rural poor have managed their way of living. But this form of exchange has been forgotten and neglected at the same time. Instead, microfinance institutions have come with high interest rates, asking for collateral and stringent means of recovering the loans, involving arrests.
Such an issue would be quite interesting to report about. I intent to go down to the rural set ups and bring out the exact picture of how this fair form of exchange has stayed for this long, despite there being banks and microfinance institutions that are not of much help to them.