I was asked the exact same question a couple of months ago during a meeting with a group in Nairobi. I had never thought about it before, so I was caught unprepared, but my instinctive answer was that self-help groups have …

Let me point out two errors in the title of this post. First, the plural of chama in Swahili is 'vyama', not 'chamas' like English speakers say. Second, the term self-help group is a “development-friendly” way of describing a chama, …