MICROCAPITAL BRIEF: World Council of Credit Unions (WOCCU): Afghan Islamic Investment and Financial Cooperatives (IIFCs) Distributed Microfinance Loans Worth $7.4m in Last Third of 2010

World Council of Credit Unions (WOCCU), a US-based trade association and support agency for credit unions, reports that between September and December 2010, 30 Islamic investment and financial cooperatives (IIFCs) in Afghanistan distributed loans worth USD 7.4 million to approximately 8,000 farmers and other small and medium-scale business owners, increasing cooperative membership by 10 percent. WOCCU began developing IIFCs, Afghan-owned credit unions, in 2004 with funding from the Microfinance Investment and Support Facility for Afghanistan (MISFA), an instrument of the Afghan government. WOCCU Senior Vice President Barry Lennon states, “The IIFC structure is quite different from other microfinance institutions and banks in Afghanistan… The member ownership and the participation of local elders have permitted the IIFCs to...

to receive a complete sample issue of the

, the monthly microfinance newspaper.