Winning respect: lives are changing for women in Niger

14 May 2006

In the towns and villages of Niger, a quiet revolution is taking place. Previously silenced, desperately poor and cut off from the wider community, women are gaining a new-found confidence as well as greater financial security thanks to CARE’s Mata Masu Dubara or ‘ingenious women’ programme.   

I travelled to Say, a small town on the banks of the impressive Niger river about forty minutes away from the capital city Niamey, to meet with a network of women who are all members of Mata Masu Dubara (MMD) groups and find out about the incredible impact it has had on their lives.

I had first heard about the groups in the context of last year’s devastating food crisis. As savings and loans groups, they helped their members weather the crisis better than many others in the country because they had something to fall back on.

Fadima Adamou, the chairwoman of the Say network, describes how they save money together in a collective fund every fortnight in order to make loans to members of the group and to fund investment by individuals or jointly.

This has not only enabled individual women to buy goats and cows – already a major step forward in a society where women have traditionally owned very little or nothing at all – but has also allowed the group to set up some joint ventures like a ‘shop’ selling animal fodder, another for agricultural essentials like seeds and fertilizer and a cereal bank.

Within Say, it’s clear this approach has given women unprecedented access to money and a role in the marketplace they never had before. What’s even more impressive is looking at the figures across Niger as a whole where the total funds available either as savings or loans within all the MMD groups put together totals a staggering $4.5million.

Tip of the iceberg 

Yet, absolutely crucial though it is, this economic aspect of the programme represents just a fraction of Mata Masu Dubara’s impact. To understand why this is only the tip of the iceberg and why describing them as ‘savings and loans groups’ doesn’t even begin to do them justice, I asked about what life was like before they belonged to the MMD groups. 

I was not prepared to hear the stories of isolation and exclusion that followed.

Bibata Diofo whose group is called ‘a long life’ explains: “Before we joined the groups we worked individually in our homes. If we passed one another on the street we didn’t say hello. Sometimes we didn’t even know that we were related to another woman because we didn’t speak to each other. We rarely went to village meetings and if we did we wouldn’t speak. We didn’t even really speak to our husbands much because we didn’t feel we had anything to contribute to the household.”

When I asked how different their lives before the groups had been from those of their mothers, there was a unanimous shaking of heads and agreement that life had been exactly the same. Decades, if not centuries, of tradition meant that a woman’s role was entirely confined to working in the home and had no place at all in the wider community, even in interacting with other women.

Fati Sabou, whose group name ‘Soudji da Gomni’ means happiness and prosperity, says: “Very few women in this network will have had an education because our parents didn’t think it was important to educate girls in particular.” 

Djama Halidou says: “If the groups weren’t there, we would suffer just like our parents and grandparents. I don’t want to return to the past.”

"Our minds have been awakened" 

I had the sense that, previously, the women hadn’t even been aware that life could be different. Yet asked to describe life now, they paint an entirely different picture.

“It's like our minds have been awakened,” says Bibata Diofo. “Before I felt I didn’t know anything - now we know how to run the group and to manage our own business. There is a strong sense of solidarity among the women in the group so that we support each other and really work together. And when someone has a baptism or a marriage, we will help them to organize a party. ”

Ramiatou Bello, CARE’s co-ordinator for the groups in the Tillabery region where Say is located, adds: “Important changes are happening at home too. Women talk more with their husbands. They see how they can contribute financially to the household as well as helping to take decisions for the family about things like health, schooling and food. Men are also very happy with the situation now too.”

These new skills and confidence have led to some dramatic changes. For the first time ever this year, a woman, Fati Sabou, has been elected as a local councillor not only with support from local women but also from many men.

Last year in the height of the food crisis, the women of the network wrote to the mayor and other officials in the area to say they wanted to open their grain store to the whole village. After the crisis was over, they received a letter from the prefet thanking them for their contribution to helping the wider community survive the worst of the crisis.

And when we talk about the future they wish for their daughters, they see: “We hope they will finish school and university and then go on to get a good job.”

As I leave the courtyard where we’ve been meeting in the heat of the morning, a lively discussion is taking place about their plans for International Women’s Day. Enthusiasm, laughter and opinions circulate in the air – even without translation the energy and vitality are evident. Yet three years ago, these were women who didn’t feel able to speak out in public.

It’s nothing more than a fortnightly gathering of women saving money together that has brought about this transformation. CARE’s programme isn’t complicated and doesn’t cost lots of money. Yet in its simplicity lies its power to fundamentally and sustainably change women’s lives for the better.