Social performance assessment of alternative financial institutions: Lessons from South Africa

Abstract

Peer Review DeclarationThe publisher (AOSIS) endorses the South African 'National Scholarly Book Publishers Forum Best Practice for Peer Review of Scholarly Books'. The manuscript was subjected to rigorous two-step peer review prior to publication, with the identities of the reviewers not revealed to the author(s). The reviewers were independent of the publisher and/ or authors in question. The reviewers commented positively on the scholarly merits of the manuscript and recommended that the manuscript be published. Where the reviewers recommended revision and/or improvements to the manuscript, the authors responded adequately to such recommendations. v Research JustificationFinancial inclusion has been noted as a key driver of poverty alleviation and growth. Yet most of the scholarly work that exists lacks a comprehensive discussion on how the poor interact with financial services and the channels through which such services can affect their livelihoods. This book addresses this gap in scholarship. This is important in creating a substantive understanding of how useful financial inclusion is as a concept and practice. The number of articles written on the determinants and effects of financial inclusion at a broad cross-country level is growing. Yet almost all of this literature assumes the impacts of financial inclusion without paying attention to how these effects are transmitted. An understanding of the transmission mechanisms is fundamental to effective application. Moreover, a rapidly developing discourse in financial inclusion literature is digital finance. Much has been written and is being written about the benefits of digital finance with hardly any discussion of the channels through which such benefits are transmitted. This book discusses the various transmission mechanisms through which not only traditional finance can affect the poor but also how digital finance is transmitted to poverty. Most significantly, the chapter on digital finance provides cross-country evidence for African countries.Moreover, the often-macro perspective in the financial inclusion literature implies that country-specific nuances that can provide critical learning points are often overlooked. This book provides six original empirical case studies of financial inclusion in six African countries. The case studies cover a broad area of topics most important to African countries and highlight the unique African setting. The role of cooperative financial institutions and social entrepreneurship presented in this volume, for example, is hardly researched in Africa and yet is an important vehicle to circumvent the restrictive and exclusive bank-based financial markets unique to Africa. The chapters employ various methodologies depending on the topic being addressed in the chapter. Most of these use quantitative methods. Five chapters are empirical in nature and use inferential statistics, whilst the other two use mixed methods with qualitative data as well as descriptive statistics. This scholarly book offers researchers who focus on f...