Great news from Mozambique as we have another Mifos deployment live and another Mifos user to welcome to the community.  Miguel and Natu from Iniciativa Mifos Moçambique just finished implementing Mifos at Profamilia Moçambique.  Miguel is leading efforts to promote and distribute Mifos all throughout Southern Africa - his team has successfully brought the Mifos technology to Associação Progresso in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique and to Kongalend Financial Services in Namibia. Beyond Mozambique, their team is seeking out additional Mifos users to add to the community in Zambia and Cape Verde. 

Profamilia Moçambique's microfinance operations serve the province of Inhambane, benefiting the populations of the districts of Inhambane, Zavala, Inharime, Morrumbene through the provision of more inclusive financial services. They target their solidarity group loans at low income customers, particularly women.

We want to take the chance to highlight one of the top contributors to our community, SolDevelo, based in Gdynia, Poland. They are a telling example that no matter where you are located in the world, you can play your part towards creating a world of 3 Billion Maries.

Finding talented Java developers is always a challenge, especially given the complex business requirements that Mifos supports. Yet our team is always impressed that whatever project we send to SolDevelo, they quickly and thoroughly deliver a solution of superb quality.  Their nimble team is always up to the challenge, ready and willing to work on new features, fixing bugs, building reports, quality assurance - whatever our users need for a better product. Many thanks to Jakub for writing this post to highlight his team and the work they've done on the Mifos project. 

The Iniciativa Mifos^® Moçambique team recently concluded a trip out to Windhoek, Namibia, kicking off Mifos deployment with the team at Kongalend Financial Services. 

Earlier this year, I got several emails from Semba Funda, the IT manager, at Kongalend Financial Services in Namibia. Semba had expressed a strong desire to use Mifos but was in need of a local expert to help them get the full benefits of Mifos.  Kongalend is a Namibian microfinance instutition based in Windhoek providing credit and power loan products to those with limited or no access to financial services. They were looking to streamline their operations and have greater control over what their software could do for their business. Their existing system, LendMaster, had very limited support and was impeding day to day operations; they were confident Mifos was the solution for them. With the Iniciativa Mifos^® Moçambique team at their side, they're now ready for a Mifos solution that will allow sustainable growth for the microcredit activities and expansion to several Namibian regions. 

Our roadshow was intended to showcase the functionalities of Mifos to MFIs in northern India. We chose to start with Utter Pradesh (North India state) because of its highly dense population plagued by gender inequality and poverty with more than 40% living below the poverty line. Most of the MFIs are lagging in adopting technology compared to their counterparts in South India. 

Miguel Jóia representing Iniciativa Mifos^® Moçambique recently presented Mifos at the 10th anniversary celebration of ICC Mozambique. 

A Toast to the Iniciativa Mifos Moçambique

Building on the 10th anniversary of the ICC Mozambique, members of the Iniciativa Mifos Moçambique presented on the 8th of December their Mifos-related services for various Microfinance Operators, regulators and funders.

The Iniciativa Mifos Moçambique has been in the market since February 2010 and completed in September its first Portuguese Mifos deployment for a Mozambican MFI. Mifos partners, SBS (Miguel Jóia), ICC (Henriqueta Hunguana) and Afrisis (Natu Lauchande) represent this Mifos Specialist providing value-added services for the Mifos platform and expressed their commitment to disseminate and implement the Mifos system in Mozambique and other Portuguese speaking countries.

Plans for 2011 are:

If you take a look at who’s in the Mifos community, you’ll see that it’s a diverse group of individuals from all backgrounds from around the world. Our community crosses physical boundaries, cultural barriers, and multiple time zones to unite all with a common vision to collaborate to deliver technology for microfinance.

Let’s meet Jeff Blue and Julia Kurnia, a father and daughter from Washington, DC who implemented Mifos at SEM Fund (Senegal Ecovillage Microfinance) , a microfinance institution (MFI) serving approximately 1,500 clients in Yoff, Senegal.SEM Fund, one of the original Kiva lending partners began in 2004 and expanded to 38 villages in 2006 when Julia, a Portfolio Analyst at the US African Development Foundation joined as a co-founder. When SEM Fund’s needs grew beyond Microsoft Excel, she looked to her father, Jeff, a retired applications and database manager, for support.