Paper short abstract:

This paper examines several women's neighborhood credit associations in the city of Dakar, Senegal and the intricate debt sequences for funding development projects or family ceremonies.

Paper long abstract:

Many women in the city of Dakar, Senegal are part of informal or more formalized neighborhood credit associations, called mbootaye, often funded by government sanctioned projects or through money pooling by its members. The associations are designed to allow women to pursue development projects and more commonly, to meet the social demands of contributing to family ceremonies. Mbootaye have become popular spaces for popular development strategies to provide micro-loans to women's organizations. This paper examines the money pooling and lending activities of several of these associations in the outlying neighborhoods of Parcelles Assainies and Yeumbeul Sud. It discusses the place of the associations and their members among public discourse that casts them as productive and yet contributing to excessive and unproductive enterprises such as expensive family ceremonies.