Impact of Microfinance Institutions on Poverty Alleviation in Sudan

This study was conducted to find out whether the Sudanese microfinance institutions has achieved their objectives in terms of reaching the targeted groups, alleviating their poverty and providing their services in a sustainable manner. In addition, to explore the moderating effect of loan size and entrepreneurial experience on the relationship between microfinance services and poverty reduction. This study has employed the Household Economic Portfolio model, Foster, Greer and Thornbecke (FGT) model, and the modified Nanyakkara model. Meanwhile, children’s education, health status, food security, assets accumulation, housing condition, clothing, employment, resource base, self-esteem and optimistic towards the future were taken as non-monetary dimensions, which selected by participatory approach. Income and consumption expenditure as monetary indicators; breadth of outreach, depth of outreach, financial sustainability and incidence of poverty were taken as social and financial factors. This study selected the sample from Port Sudan Association for Small Enterprise Development, South Darfur Microfinance Institution, Agricultural Bank Microfinance Initiative, Alwatania Microfinance Foundation and Gezira Microfinance Institution in poorest regions of Sudan. The present study used both primary data and secondary information. The primary data was collected by the means of two questionnaires for monetary and non-monetary variables while the secondary data was obtained from the records of the selected microfinance institutions, which analysed by using three software namely the partial least squares technique by applying Smart PLS software version 3.2, SPSS version 22, and Excel 2007, 2010. The findings illustrate that microfinance programme provided by Sudanese microfinance institutions have positively affected most of poverty dimensions. However, microfinance services not improved the housing conditions of the clients; while, it also shows mixed results in the impact on children’s education. Moreover, the results also demonstrated that loan size and business experience are moderating the relationship between microfinance services and poverty reduction. Furthermore, the findings illustrate that the selected five microfinance institutions have demonstrated a good performance with respect to their overall social and financial performance. This study contributes to the available literature by filling the gaps via applying participatory approach to select poverty dimensions at the household level, which ignored in related previous studies. Apart from that, this study also contributes to the available literature by introducing loan size and business experience as factors influencing the borrowers’ performance on the usage of microfinance services. Furthermore, this study has modified Nanyakkara model by adding female clients as a new indicator for the depth of outreach and incidence of poverty as a new dimension for the impact on the welfare of the client to measure the overall financial and social performance of microfinance institutions