Notes from the Field: Visiting Caurie Microfinance >

Today I took a short trip with Ali (Babacar's brother) and Andre Roland Youm, Director of Operations at Caurie MF, to Thies in west central Senegal. Thies is situated 35 miles 56 km) east of Dakar, a 90-minute drive from Saly, where we held our PPI Training and Executive session. Thies, one of the largest cities in Senegal, is an important transportation center. The junction of the eastern Dakar-Niger River railway and the northern rail and road systems is located there. So is Caurie Microfinance, one of the larger MFIs within the country.

Caurie Microfinance has a portfolio of 31,479 clients in 6 branches. It is one of three MFIs that have most recently completed a PPI pilot in Senegal through the PPI Users Collaborative in Africa (PUCA) and is a partner of Catholic Relief Services (CRS).Caurie MF is using the PPI to know their client base, to better target whom to reach, and to understand the poverty movement of those clients over time.

I met with Mamadou Lamine Gueye, the CEO of Caurie Microfinance to talk about why Caurie chose to use the PPI, what it has learned and what it is planning going forward. Check out the interview below!

Preeti Wali is Communications Officer at the Grameen Foundation Social Performance Management Center (SPMC). She is based in Washington, DC.