This important new book analyzes, through field research, the most relevant microcredit programs in existence in Eritrea. This African country recently completed a thirty-year war of liberation and lives today through an extraordinary period of construction of its own national identity. Committed to promoting and supporting microcredit initiatives, it seeks an active participation by women in the process of reconstruction and remains a country firmly committed to its own history and culture. Eritrea therefore constitutes an excellent case for observing and analyzing microcredit programs on a large scale, carried out in a very geographically varied land, with a high number of participants and a diverse population, in a postwar situation.

Today, as the concept of development has come under criticism, two issues have become central to discussions of how to change conditions of life in the poorest countries: gender and microcredit. This book, based on extensive field research and interviews with both women participants in microcredit programs and with experts from the same programs and from international agencies and NGOs, is an important new contribution to the study and practice of ameliorating conditions for Third World women.

With an eye to the issue of female empowerment, the authors shed light on the great difficulties encountered in conducting microcredit programs in a social environment governed by ancient norms and traditions. They identify the strategies carried out by the various subjects involved, field agents and clients to further develop the possibilities of such programs. Rather than the point of view of World Bank or NGO experts, the authors valorize the point of view of the women participants, and in the words of the women themselves, they find suggestions for social change oriented toward the needs of the poorest people. With extensive discussion of the varying theoretical approaches to microcredit, and with an extensive bibliography, the book is ideal for classroom discussion as well as for practitioners of microcredit projects.

ABOUT THE EDITORS
FRANCESCA ZAMPERETTI, a scholar of Eritrea, has worked from 1988 to 1994 in cooperation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, General Management for Promoting Development, and in the years 1990-1992 worked with the same ministry as an expert on developing social protection programs carried out with Italian support in African countries. With a Laurea Degree in Psychology from the University of Padua, Italy, she is active in voluntary associations for promoting development projects with a specialization in microcredit.

GIOVANNA FRANCA DALLA COSTA, Professor of General Sociology, Industrial Sociology and Microfinance and Development, teaches in the Faculty of Psychology at the University of Padua, as well as in the Interfaculty Laurea Program in Promoting Development. She is the author of numerous publications translated into several languages. Among her works are: M. Dalla Costa and G.F. Dalla Costa, (editors) (1993) Donne e politiche del debito. Condizione e lavoro femminile nella crisi del debito internazionale, (Franco Angeli) [English edition: (1995): Paying the Price. Women and Politics of International Economic Strategy (Zed Books); M.Dalla Costa e G.F.Dalla Costa (editors) (1996), Donne, sviluppo e lavoro di riproduzione. Questioni delle lotte e dei movimenti (Franco Angeli) [ed. in English: (1999), Women, Development and Labor of Reproduction, Africa World Press, Trenton, Asmara]; G.F.Dalla Costa (1978) Un Lavoro d’Amore, Edizioni delle donne; [to be published in English as The Work of Love: Unpaid Housework and Domestic Violence, Autonomedia, Brooklyn, 2004].

CATEGORY
Economics, Women's Studies/AFRICA