Last month, David Roodman, a research fellow at the Center for Global Development, pressed a button on his laptop as his bus left the Lincoln Tunnel in Manhattan and started a debate that has people re-examining the country’s latest celebrated charity, Kiva.org.
See the saga in the NY Times. And check out David’s excellent blog.
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The thing that jumps out at me from the NY Times article:
“Premal Shah, Kiva’s president, said he could foresee a day when Kiva really did provide person-to-person connection, once some legal hurdles are cleared and when people in the developing world began using their mobile phones to use credit and make payments.”
So would Kiva then only be providing microfinance to people who are able to receive payments in this way? Or would they be running two parallel loan systems?