The effect of microfinance on rural women empowerment in Kikuyu constituency, Kiambu county in Kenya
Abstract
Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) provide its members with various
services to help
improve
their entrepreneurial ventures and in the end empowering them. Despite many
studies
carried
on
the topic, the
effect of microfinance intervention on the empowerment of women
entrepreneurs in rural constituencies remains largely unexplored in Kenya.
This
study sought
to
close the gap by
establishing
the effect of
Micro Finance on
rural
women empowerment
in
Kikuyu Constituency, Kiambu
County
in Kenya. The study adopted a descriptive research
design with the population consisting of all
women groups in
Kikuyu Constituency, Kiambu
County in Kenya. The sample
of the study consisted of the 80
active women groups. Primary
data was gathered
using structured questionnaire
for analysis which was done using the
Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS version 19) to generate the descriptive statistics
and also to generate the trends results and
regression
findings. Findings
on the analysis of
variance (ANOVA) indicate that the overall model was statistically significant as indicated
by an F statistic of 4.863 and p value less than 0.04608
. The regression analysis revealed that
micro credit to be statistically significant with
micro training and micro saving with
significance of more than 5% to be
not statistically significant.
This study provides
recommendations
clear financial management strategies should be set aside to address key
critical financial difficulties facing
women particularly developing good financial
management technique to provide adequate responses to challenges and problems by
focusing on women business processes to minimize claims and enable women growth and
women empowerment
and have
clear framework to
advice women on how financial
management decisions are made and the procedure to be followed to make sure the right
decisions are made to meet the benefit of the customers and maintain their visibility. This will
enable to minimize any conflict of interest
which might ruin their
image and reputation.
Nevertheless, w
omen should focus on planning issues to improve their effectiveness and
efficiency. Operating activities which involves receivables, payments and savings should be
well management to ensure efficiency and effectiveness to maintain steady cash flows to
finance groups operating long term projects and goals
Publisher
University of Nairobi