Loans from Village Saving and Loan Associations (VSLAs) are being used to fund ventures in farming or other businesses, or to finance school fees — all with the aim of gender empowerment.
Roseline Gban Adrien is a smallholder farmer and VSLA member in Mahapleu, Côte d’Ivoire. Driven by the need to keep her four children in education, her situation has transformed since being a member: “Before I joined the VSLA, I was very worried. I needed to be able to afford the school fees to keep my children in education,” Roseline says. Now she is a proud homeowner who has been able to rent out the spare bedrooms in her six-bedroom house and use the revenue not only to scale up her cocoa production but to cover her children’s school fees.
“I have been able to transform my dreams into reality!”
Roseline Gban Adrien – Smallholder Farmer & Entrepreneur, Côte d’Ivoire
A Resilient Entrepreneur
Roseline has been a cocoa and coffee farmer for over a decade. Every morning, the widowed mother of four wakes up early to prepare her two youngest children for school before setting off to work on her cocoa and coffee farms. Thanks to the VSLA, she has had the opportunity to diversify her income. As well as being a landlady, she runs a small business selling aubergines, peppers, okra, cabbages and tomatoes in the village market between the cocoa and coffee harvest seasons. Ever the entrepreneur, Roseline, is now venturing into the fashion industry, saying: “I can afford to go to Abidjan and buy children’s clothes, sell them and make a profit.”
A New Venture in Rice Farming
In addition to personal enterprise, Roseline also supports the economic and social development of her community through the VSLA. She attends weekly VSLA meetings where she connects with members from her town and neighbouring villages. This group of 40 women, aged 18 to 65, share a rice farm. Each of them contributes to its smooth running, and at the end of the harvest season, they share the revenues equally. Speaking on this partnership, Roseline says, “We have been able to buy a rice pounding machine, which saves us a lot of time.” She has also become an integral part of the VSLA management, working as a secretary to schedule and lead meetings, as well as keeping the books.
Tackling Gender Inequality from the Grassroots
In 2019, equality laws were implemented in Côte d’Ivoire to reinforce women’s rights and autonomy, granting them the right to own land and making property inheritance from deceased spouses and parents easier and less gender-biased in favour of men. Education for women and girls has also become a national priority, and parents are required to ensure the attendance of their children until the age of sixteen. There is still a long way to go before broader equality is reached. “Thanks to their own income, women participate equally in the household, and husbands and other members of the family see a clear change in patterns surrounding gender roles,” says Guy Roger Dalleba, our Regional Project Supervisor in Côte d’Ivoire.
Beyond setting up VSLAs, our staff are working hard to continue this positive trend by providing training across Côte d’Ivoire’s multiple VSLA groups. We provide workshops on enterprise development, community well-being and child protection to group members. The curriculum is particularly effective and inclusive as it is adapted to meet everyone’s literacy levels and learning pace, using highly visual and participatory methods. The training modules address the specific needs and concerns of working women in rural areas, meaning women like Roseline, have the skills and knowledge to be independent. “The programme is designed to offer training modules for the members to achieve autonomy,” says Guy Roger.
A Ripple Effect: The impact on children
Roseline says she has gained knowledge in entrepreneurship, managing her finances, and how best to invest her savings. As a home and farm owner, she stands out amid Côte d’Ivoire’s male-dominated land-owning population, praising VSLA’s impact, she says: “I have been able to transform my dreams into reality!”
Roseline reflects on her learning experience with the scheme, saying, “When the supervisor presented the concept, we did not understand it, we didn’t know how we would be able to manage this process. [But] now even men want to join! The main issue for us was how to handle the money,” she says, “Now the VSLA is helping us. Before joining the group, we didn’t know what to do when we didn’t have an income; we had nothing to fall back on. Now, I am reassured that I can afford to borrow the money for my children’s school if I need to and pay it back at a realistic pace.”
Roseline partially credits her children’s advancement to secondary education to her property ownership, “With this property, two of my children can live there and are closer to their high school.”
Looking to the Future
With her incredible foresight and determination, Roseline is leading her group to access bigger loans: “We want to access formal finance institutions to be able to buy a motor tricycle or a car because we have issues with transportation.”
For this next step, we are supporting VSLA groups in becoming certified by local and national authorities. In addition, we are providing training on loan terms and conditions.
Access to financing through microfinance institutions and banks will take the potential of VSLA group entrepreneurs like Roseline to another level. By partnering with these bodies, we aim to provide access to financial products that work for VSLA members and show that working with poor rural women brings many benefits. Links to formal financial institutions, will make it much easier for women to obtain the larger loans needed to undertake diverse and more profitable enterprises.