Overview

The lack of financing for small and medium sized merchants in Africa hurts people. It hurts many of them by depriving them of the ability to do business beyond basic levels. Traders sell less than they could, and make less money than they should, because they don’t get support from lenders to finance their trade in goods. Whatever they buy, typically has to be paid for in cash. It is hard to capture the full extent to which this puts a squeeze on the lives of people. Less money means less and lower quality calories. It means less to spend on housing, education, medicine, and communication. Overall, it also means more unproductive gaps between productive trading days, while traders wait for the arrival of goods they have purchased in cash. The mission of the Kommerce project is to make working capital more easily available to traders in Emerging Markets.