Kamundi 4 Group

The Kamundi 4 group is located in Dedza district. The group has 5 members and all of them are married women. The women have a joint total of 18 children that they take care of and a majority of these children go to school. The members of Kamundi 4 group are mainly engaged in businesses like selling vegetables, farm produce and clothes.

The members applied for a loan from our local partner MLF Malawi to buy stocks for their small businesses. Loness is 50 years old and she is one of the members of Kamundi 4 group. Her husband runs a butchery and together they have five children. Loness sells farm produce and she has been in this business for four years. She started this business to provide for her family realizing how profitable her small business is in their community. Loness will use her portion of the loan to buy maize to sell. The other members in this group will use their shares of the group loan to buy vegetables and clothes to sell. In the coming 2 years, Loness wants to build a house and save an amount of MK500,000 (£453.87).

The Microloan Foundation in Malawi lend to female entrepreneurs using the ‘centre’ model. A centre is typically made up of 3-4 sub-groups and these sub-groups almost always have five members. Each centre has its own name and the sub-groups within the centre share the same name. Each person within the group of five women is responsible for repaying her loan but the members support each other and if a member is unable to repay her loan on time, then the group assumes responsibility for repayment. Loan officers provide training to the groups, although it is expected that centre leaders will eventually assume responsibility for providing some of the basic training.

If you are lending, please be aware that due to the current COVID-19 pandemic your repayments could be at greater risk of delay or default.