Case Studies in Microfinance: South Africa - Get Ahead Foundation (GAF)
Churchill, C.
Publication Date: 1996
Published by: World Bank - Sustainable Banking with the Poor (SBP)
Document Type: Case Study
Evaluating the effectiveness of the Get Ahead Foundation initiative
Get Ahead Foundation (GAF) is one of South Africa's best- known NGOs. However, Get Ahead today barely resembles its original incarnation. Its evolution from a broad-based, multi- faceted community development organization into a specialized microfinance institution provides important lessons for the field of microfinance. This evolution is particularly interesting because it closely parallels one of the most significant political developments of this decade, the democratization of South Africa.
GAF was designed to combat the effects of apartheid through a vast array of economic and social interventions. In addition to the Stokvel Program, Get Ahead's multi-faceted approach included:
- Social programs such as education and primary health-care projects;
- Financial services such as a business loans program for individual entrepreneurs;
- A commercial partnership lending program to link formal and informal businesses;
- Programs to promote housing loans and village banking;
- Non-financial services such as technical and business skills training, formation of trade associations;
- Marketing services for small-scale industry products;
- A job creation project.
All these different projects contributed loosely to Get Ahead's mission to promote black economic empowerment. This diffusion of efforts reflected the diversity of needs of the African population under apartheid, and the interests of international donors seeking to meet those needs. Since donors did not channel resources through the apartheid government, they assisted NGOs to provide critical services to African communities.
Get Ahead attracted significant contributions from international and local donors through a well-developed public-relations campaign. However, each donor had a separate agenda, and Get Ahead became the vehicle for their purposes. An evaluation by the German donor, GTZ, in 1994 aptly described Get Ahead as "a jack of all trades, master of none." The evaluation should have induced the donor community to accept some responsibility for this condition.
The paper concludes that the immediate challenges for GAF fall into four categories:
- Sustainability;
- Leadership and governance;
- Fraud prevention;
- Decentralization.
The resurrection of Get Ahead's Stokvel Lending Program is still in its early days. Although portfolio quality has been restored, achieving efficiency, self-sufficiency, and financial stability are still major challenges. Regardless of the eventual outcome, the painful process of problem identification and reform provides a lesson that programs should try to get it right from the beginning, but if that is not the case, all is not lost. With the proper mix of leadership, timing, technical assistance and donor influence, dramatic change is possible.
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