AMSCO Supports Microfinance Firm to Boost Women Entrepreneurs

Lift above Poverty (LAPO), a microfinance institution committed to raising the socio-economic status of low-income people particularly women in Nigeria, is on its way to becoming a world class organization through the support of the African Management Services Company (AMSCO).

Motivated by the need to strengthen the company’s financial management processes, the management of LAPO sought the assistance of established management and capacity building organization, AMSCO.

In response to the request, AMSCO seconded Dr. Kamakhya Singh, to join LAPO’s administrative board as the Chief Finance Officer, to better position the organisation for the transformation into a licensed Micro Finance Bank and also assist with subsequent expansions. The strategic input of the manager has helped the organization reach a wider group of clients within the last few years.

According to Mr. Godwin Ehigiamusoe, executive director, LAPO, “Since the strategic partnership with AMSCO, we have been able to touch more lives in the last years and provide more solutions to women entrepreneurs than ever before. AMSCO’s input has had a tremendous impact on our operations.”

Commenting on the progress made since his deployment to LAPO, Dr. Kamakhya Singh said, “There has been remarkable success in skills transfer to the local staff, particularly in the finance department. The number of projects executed has also increased by a large margin. This comes even as LAPO recently celebrated two major milestones at the Microfinance Conference it hosted on the 17th October, 2013 in commemoration of World Poverty Day. The first of these milestones is the achievement of a client base of one million, while the second is the cumulative disbursement of one billion US Dollars.”

LAPO has enjoyed robust growth, now serving more than 500,000 microenterprise borrowers, 90 percent of whom are women. This growth has enabled LAPO to lower interest rates by almost 20 percent, and it has also become the first microfinance provider in Sub-Saharan Africa to use a nationally representative poverty scorecard to select its clients and track their poverty levels.

The organization aims to continue to enhance leadership skills, literacy status and political participation among poor women.

“Being associated with LAPO has been one of the highlights of my years at AMSCO. The institution has successfully pulled hundreds of Nigerians, mostly women out of poverty by listening to its customers and by focusing on adapting its operations to their needs. This is financial inclusion at its best,’’ said AMSCO Regional Manager; West & Central Africa, Mohamed Ky.

AMSCO is a special purpose project of the UNDP, established in 1989 to rollout the African Training and Management Services (ATMS) Project in order to assist African enterprises to become globally competitive, profitable and sustainable.

The International Finance Corporation (IFC) is the Executing Agency and the African Development Bank is the Regional Coordinating Agency for the Project.