Plan International has announced the training of 118 community resource persons in skills to facilitate the formation of savings and loan groups for poor and vulnerable families in Tanzania.

The training, Development Diaries gathered, was conducted under the humanitarian organisation’s Keeping Adolescent Girls in School Project (KAGIS).

According to Plan International, the training will improve the economic conditions of adolescent girls and also help in the fight against child marriages in Geita and Kigoma.

‘Through our Keeping Adolescent Girls in School Project (KAGIS), supported by [Global Affairs Canada], we [are] training 118 community resource persons to facilitate the formation of savings and loan groups for poor and vulnerable families in Geita [and] Kigoma’, Plan International said in a tweet.

‘The training will help improve girls’ economic conditions and minimise their exposure to child marriage as a result of missing out on school’.

A 2016 policy analysis by the National Microfinance Bank (NMB) revealed that the proportion of Tanzanians saving at a formal financial institution had decreased while the proportion of those saving informally increased.

The analysis also noted that most Tanzanians prefered saving informally in groups because it helped them to reduce pressure imposed on their free cash by family and friends.

Informal group savings also help to decrease the financial illiteracy gap that is more evident in the rural areas.

Data from the Borgen Project suggests that around 80 percent of Tanzanians do not have access to a formal bank within two kilometres of walking distance and only four percent of the rural population has a bank account.

Poverty also remains high in the East African country, with data from Statista putting the poverty rate in Tanzania at 25.7 percent in 2020.

Photo source: Plan International