ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDY ON MICROCREDIT AND GENDER DEVELOPMENT IN THE MIDDLE EAST ISLAMIC COUNTRIES

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The aim of this research project is to grasp the actual situation of the micro credit programs in some of the Middle Eastern and North African countries and to make an anthropological study on its impact on poverty reduction and gender development. The first two years of this project, from 2002 to 2003, the fieldworks were carried out in Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria and Mauritania. The documents of the Micro credit laws and the MC policies of these countries were collected, and the participant observations were conducted on the sites of the MC institutions, interviewing with the officers and the beneficiaries. These field researches clarified the varieties and characteristics in the practicing processes of MC in these countries. The successful and unsuccessful cases were also studied. During the latter half of the project, from 2005 to 2006, the factors of successful sustainability and those of failure were equally investigated in the field researches. The information from the MC Regional Summit of the Middle East and Africa and from that of Asia and the Pacific was also useful for comparative analysis. It is concluded, as a result, that the low interest rates of MC do not always produce the expected outcomes and high repayment rates. Well-organized MC programs with friendly and flexible services for beneficiaries proved to have much more impact on sustainability with high repayment rate as well as on poverty reduction and gender development. The rolls of NGOs and the civil associations can also be an important element for bridging the government and people as observed in Morocco and Tunisia. This research project has thus made meaningful contributions by clarifying several problems involved in the actual MC programs in the Middle East and North Africa and suggesting certain remedies for them, though the number of countries observed are limited.