Welcome to Malawi!

After 30 hours of travel our last flight descended into Lilongwe through beautiful blue skies with large puffy white clouds. The terrain between Nairobi and Liliongwe had been mostly green grasslands and we could see Kilimanjaro rise in the distance. The airplane landed, did a U-turn on the runway (thankfully no other planes landed!) and drove back to the airport. We were here!

After a day of rest the work began. We met with MUSCCO, the apex organization for the SACCO movement in Malawi (A SACCO is a credit union. It stands for Savings and Credit Coop). There are a few large banks in Malawi but they tend to serve commercial clients and the rich. They have no presence in the rural areas and in a country where 85% of its 30million people live in the countryside this is a huge gap. While credit unions are a “cool compliment” to the Canadian banking sector, they are the only point of service for many in Malawi, a veritable life changing tool.

The system is facing multiple challenges in building capacity; “computerization” is all the rage as many of the SACCOS still operate on paper based systems, but many villages don’t even have access to internet service. Electonic banking is becoming popular, but credit unions here don't have the resources to offer an ATM network, web banking or a phone banking option. And even at the macro level, the “information services” that Canadian banks take for granted, things like credit bureaus and property registration systems, are non-existent. But strength is building; mergers are starting to occur allowing some SACCOS to begin to invest in infrastructure and it sounds like while we are here new credit union specific legislation will pass.

Once orientation was complete our team of 6 broke into teams of 2. Blake and myself were to stay in Lilongwe while the other teams went Blantyre in the South and Rumphi in the North. Each group will work with 2 SACCOs while they’re here and we’re pretty eager to get going…