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In the small but perfectly located Opportunity kiosk in the heart of the Lujeri tea estate we bumped into small holder farmer, Felix Lusewa.

Edward Fox with Opportunity client Felix Lusewa

His story blew me away.  He’s banked with Opportunity for 4 years, having to travel some distance during that time until we started to put the new Mulanje network in that place.  In that time he’s increased the size and profitability of his business substantially.  I assumed he had benefited from a loan to achieve this but he said it was all down to hard work and the ability to save for the very first time in a safe place.

Felix confessed that having cash at home used to be tempting and any spare was all too easily frittered away.  Once his Opportunity account was opened he tucked cash away whenever he had a little spare.  He built up sufficient capital to buy further land to farm, to improve his home and, most recently, buy a small motorbike.  He now employs 6 people on his land, which grows tea, bananas and pineapples.  He also keeps bees for honey.

Felix’s story is testimony to the power of saving and how effectively it can turbocharge the success of a hard working and entrepreneurial spirit.  Unbeknown to us he’s become a real ambassador for saving in general and Opportunity in particular.  He’s even helped his workers to open up their own savings accounts and he pays their wages into them…

Last week, I met Joseph Meke in Malawi. Joseph has a well developed business buying and selling “maize” (corn). He’s a natural-born entrepreneur.

Opportunity Malawi Client Joseph Meke

When Joseph joined Opportunity in 2007, he made a monthly profit of around £120 – which is well above the norm. His Opportunity loans helped him buy his maize in bulk, saving transportation costs.

Every month he buys a bulk load of Maize grain from a rural area of Malawi. He pays a local farmer £3.40 for a bag of grain – creating a supply chain for poor farmers in the rural areas. By selling the bags at £5.60, Joseph has increased the monthly profit of his Maize business to £320.

Joseph used the increased profits to build 3 houses using local labour and materials. He lives in one with his wife, Zione, and their 3 children. So they now have a family home. He rents the other two properties which generates £44 profit a month.

He has used the combined profits to buy a second-hand taxi mini-bus. This makes £400 a month. He now employs 4 people paying a total of £116 in salaries each month.

At home he has bought a refrigerator and Zione has now set-up her own business selling home-made beer – using the fridge to ensure they keep nice and cool. So they have 2 incomes. Soon he will start paying taxes – creating wider societal benefit.

So from an initial income of £120 Joseph now makes around £760 a month and has diversified his interests – spreading risk. He’s able to comfortably support his own family, employs four people and many others will benefit from the trickle effect of his business.

Opportunity helped Joseph up the first couple of rungs on the ladder. But the credit should go to Joseph. He’s a great example of what can happen when an aspiring poor entrepreneur puts an Opportunity microloan to work…

Sellina has been a loan client in southern Malawi for 4 years and has seen a four-fold increase in her turn over. She used to grow and sell tomatoes to scrape a living. She wasn’t making much more than £50 a month.

Opportunity Malawi Client Sellina

That’s your stereotypical $2 a day person. But with the hand up of a small £80 loan, through an Opportunity Trust Group, she now runs a business that buys pigs from others, slaughters them and prepares them for retail sale through her butchery. She’s found an important and valuable niche in the market.

Four years on her group is still thriving and Sellina is still a client, making regular use of the bank-on-wheels when it stops in Thuchila (on Wednedays between 9am and 2pm). She still has a small loan of £160 but now most of her working capital comes from the savings she has built with her Opportunity Savings Account.

She’s now turning over £400 every month and looks well on it. She’s built a small house in the process and, unusually for this poor area has got electricity in her house. It just shows that in the right hands, a little loan can have a big impact…

When you meet so many inspiring people on field visits like this you wonder if the Opportunity Team have hand-picked the best stories and you don’t get the full picture.

Esther Malele at an Opportunity mobile bank

But Opportunity is a big name here. When I arrived at the airport I chatted to a taxi driver. I referred to the bank as Opportunity Bank – he responded as quick as a flash with “oh… OIBM” with the familiar use of the acronym that only a household name can have. When I switched on the TV for the first time, an advert was running for Opportunity’s mobile-phone banking. I was starting to get the sense that Opportunity is part of the fabric of Malawian life.

So the stories can’t be all hand picked because every corner we turned in the markets today, I met an Opportunity client. We saw this mobile branch pulled-up in Mkando where it stops every Wednesday. We’d taken a different road to the one we had planned to so none of the staff could have predicted what we would find. But again I wasn’t disappointed.

Esther Malele was depositing a small amount into her saving account. She’s banked with Opportunity for 5 years and has had loans from us to build her business selling eggs and other small items. She talked enthusiastically about the importance of having somewhere safe to deposit her income. “Until Opportunity, no one was coming down to these poor communities” she told us as she proudly deposited her money. “I use my savings and income to care for my grandchildren”.

And then she cycled off to continue her day…

Southern Malawi is heavily dependent on tea as a cash crop. The countryside is covered in beautiful rolling hillsides carpeted with tea plants. The men and women busily picking the tea make a great image of Africa but it looks like hard work. I heard today that they start picking at 4am finishing around 2pm to avoid the worst of the heat.

The Lujeri Tea Estate with Mulanje Mountain in the background

Despite all this tea I didn’t get a drop to drink as it’s largely used for export. But my visit to a plantation in Lujeri was truly inspiring. Lujeri is made up of around 8,000 pickers who work for a big tea estate and 6,300 small holder farmers who grow tea on their own land and sell it on to the estate.

The Road to Lujeri

The estate was at the end of a long dusty road – well off the beaten track. We have opened a small satellite branch right at the centre of the estate to serve the poor farmers and workers.

It’s been a smart move in so many ways. Before we opened, the nearest bank to the estate was around 30kms away – not really a viable option for people who earn so little and spend so much time working the land.

Lujeri tea growers

But through our Lujeri branch, the tea estate can now pay their employees through a bank account, saving them considerable time and risk each month. The pickers who work for the estate can save their money safely and access it easily – and for those on the outlying farms, we run a mobile banking that visits them once a week. The independent small-holder farmers are already saving with us and will soon be able to access small ‘agriculture loans’ to improve the quality and quantity of their crop.

Although it only opened in the Autumn of 2010 this branch already has 5,200 savers – a truly inspiring reach in such a rural part of Malawi.

I asked 5 of the tea growers what they dreamt of doing with their savings – in unison they replied “send our kids to a good school”.

I arrived in Malawi determined to understand whether loans liberated or burdened people. My first 2 days in Malawi can’t answer that fully – but what is clear is that Opportunity bank people in a different way to other banks. There is a huge emphasis on preparing people to use loans wisely.

I spent today with a Richard Chongo who is a ‘Transformation Officer’. Richard works closely with the banking team to ensure that change to people’s lives is woven into how we do business.

Richard Chongo (centre) with Harold and Anthon from the Mulanje branch

We are the only bank in Malawi to have these ‘transformation’ roles and they are an important part of why Opportunity is viewed differently by the poor people we work with. They talk about Opportunity as ‘banki yanga‘ – ‘our bank’. I can see why. Our branches are not as polished as the commercial banks – people can feel comfortable in an Opportunity branch.

And, more importantly, our staff spend a significant amount of time in the field meeting clients. Richard told me he spends only 4 days a month in the office – the rest of the time he is working alongside the clients, in their marketplaces and farms to really understand their business and the context that they work in.

So I probably won’t fully answer the question about the ups and downs of loans. But I am already convinced that Opportunity is putting the welfare of poor people first. It’s clear in the way the staff talk and how we are structured that the overriding mandate of Opportunity is to transform lives. This is inspiring stuff…