Empowerment on microfinance entrepreneurs

• Autor(a) principal: Machado, Bruno
• Data de Publicação: 2010
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.6/2427
• topic: Microcrédito; Tanzânia; Microfinance

Tanzania is one of the world’s poorest countries. Issues relating to poverty have largely been related with different forms of lack of power and, as such, this thesis presents itself with the goal of better understanding the relations between empowerment and poverty alleviation. It is assumed an empowerment model that, recognizes macroeconomic issues that underlie this problematic, but focuses on the concept of individual empowerment, and distinguishes three basic forms of power: social, institutional and economic. This model is analyzed through the use of both quantitative and qualitative methodology, being that the first focuses more on the impact of business training for small-scale entrepreneurs in Dar-Es-Salaam, while the second centers on a more comprehensive approach to empowerment. The findings suggest the existence of relations between different forms of power and an actual improvement of living conditions, not only based in the access to financial capital or formation of human capital, but also largely based on social capital.