(From the Aga Khan Agency for Microfinance)

Not that it left our minds entirely, but we haven't put up much lately about microfinance isssues. So today's post concentrates on microfinance, microloans, microcredit, all of those small scale loan catchwords.

But just what is microcredit? Muhammad Yunus recently explained ...

The word "microcredit" did not exist before the seventies. Now it has become a buzz-word among the development practitioners. In the process, the word has been imputed to mean everything to everybody. No one now gets shocked if somebody uses the term "microcredit" to mean agricultural credit, or rural credit, or cooperative credit, or consumer credit, credit from the savings and loan associations, or from credit unions, or from money lenders. When someone claims microcredit has a thousand year history, or a hundred year history, nobody finds it as an exciting piece of historical information.

I think this is creating a lot of misunderstanding and confusion in the discussion about microcredit. We really don't know who is talking about what. I am proposing that we put labels to various types of microcredit so that we can clarify at the beginning of our discussion which microcredit we are talking about. This is very important for arriving at clear conclusions, formulating right policies, designing appropriate institutions and methodologies. Instead of just saying "microcredit" we should specify which category of microcredit.

Other similar definitions can be found here.

Now that we have those definitions down, here are some microfinance related stories and links:

*Speaking of Muhammad Yunus, you can watch DVDs of his, and many others, presentations through the Social Entrepreneurship Series produced by Ashoka. (Via Vancouver Social Enterprise Forum).

*Journalists in Kazakhstan who want to learn more about covering microfinancing can apply for an upcoming seminar, scheduled for June 2 in Almaty.

*Soothsayer has a nice long post on microcredit.

*The Circumnavigator is traveling through the Americas, Asia and Africa to research the links between microfinance and social capital.

*Private Sector Development Blog looks at independent, objective tools for rating microfinance funds.