To ascertain the contribution of the microcredit institutions in women poverty

Copyright © 2014 ISSR Journals. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ABSTRACT: This paper aimed at ascertaining and examining the contribution of micro-credit institutions to women poverty alleviation and the following specific objectives formed important part of this study; to identify the factors attracting women to join credit services, to examine conditions used by micro-credit institutions in financing women credit borrowers, to examine the effects of credit to women borrowers in poverty alleviation, to identify the challenges facing women credit borrowers in acquiring credit and finally to identify the strategies taken to overcome challenges facing women credit borrowers in acquiring credits. The target population for this study was women credit borrowers. The study constituted a sample size of 40 respondents obtained through probability and non probability sampling. Case study design approach was employed during study. Questionnaires, interview, focus group discussion, documentary review and observations were used during data collection. The study findings showed that micro-credit institutions have great impacts and contributed to improve standard of living of many women credit borrowers and poverty alleviation at household level. The conditions, procedures, and terms used by micro credit institutions in providing credits to women credit borrowers hinder the micro-credit initiative to serve as an essential strategy for poverty alleviation. This paper concludes and recommends that despite of prevailing large number of micro credit institutions and organizations that provide financial assistance to women in povert