KENYA: Credit key to breaking cycle of poverty

This is all fine if consumer credit, which is killing Americans, isn't included.

Besides education, health and good infrastructure, access to credit ranks high among the priorities of millions of Kenyans living in informal settlements in urban and rural areas.

Even small amounts can be enough to break out of the poverty trap.

"I started this business of selling chips [French fries] two years ago using money we raised as a group of 30 women," Mary Mwihaki, 27, a resident of Mathare, one of Kenya's large slum areas in the capital Nairobi, told IRIN.

Every day, each of the women in Mwihaki's group contributes Sh20 (30 US cents) and the resulting Sh600 ($9) is given to a different member of the group on a rotating basis. Mwihaki had to wait three months to raise the $27 she needed.

Please read the snippet again and look at the amounts of money these people are working with.

Then its fine to cry.

Via Reuters.