Mainstreaming Microfinance in Uganda

Matthew Kam (Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences) and
Tu Tran (School of Information Management and Systems)
Co-advisors: Professors John Canny and David Levine

Overview

Our project team will perform a third-party evaluation of the successes and obstacles encountered in the implementation of the Remote Transaction System (RTS), a combination of technology and business processes that will extend microfinance to rural and peri-urban areas in Uganda. The RTS is being piloted by a public-private consortium of microfinance leaders, technology specialists and business thinkers convened by Hewlett-Packard.  Our team's findings will provide decision-makers in Uganda and other developing countries with a framework to design and implement an affordable technology solution for microfinance institutions, agents, and clients that will enable greater scale in lending and, eventually, commercial sustainability for the microfinance industry.

Reports

• Matthew Kam, and Tu Tran.  Lessons from Deploying the Remote Transaction System With Three Microfinance Institutions in Uganda.  UNIDO-UC Berkeley Bridging the Divide conference (Berkeley, California), April 21-22, 2005.  (PDF)

• To Ghana, Uganda, and Beyond: Fellowship Students Take to the Field.  In Forefront, College of Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, Fall 2004.  (HTML)

About the Fellowship

The UCB-UNIDO Fellowship is initiated by the University of California, Berkeley and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization to provide a new generation of graduate students with the opportunity to explore first-hand, the business, industrial development and technology-adoption issues facing developing countries.  Fellowship recipients will be sponsored to conduct field research on the application of technology in developing countries during summer 2004 as multi-disciplinary teams.  More details on the Fellowship at http://bridge.berkeley.edu/research.html.  

Preparing the Remote Transaction System for a client training session.

Microfinance group meeting with the Remote Transaction System.