Microfinance challenges: empowerment or disempowerment of the poor?

The causal relation between microfinance and empowerment is neither linear, nor unequivocal, and it is even less systematic. This book is an attempt to nourish the debate, on the one hand, by combining theoretical reflections and case studies, and on the other hand, by engaging practitioners and researchers from various backgrounds. The first part is an attempt to define the concept of empowerment. The second part highlights the central role of the environ-ment: the link between microfinance and empowerment is all the more subtle, and sometimes unfore-seeable, as microfinance projects take place within an economic, socio-cultural and political context that is itself complex, evolutionary and which partially conditions the results obtained. The third part relates to the crucial question of evaluation.