Rural financial schemes' contribution to community development.

The objective of this paper is to explore indicators for sustainable financial schemes in rural areas and to evaluate such schemes in terms of their contribution to rural community development. During the 1970's, when economic development was recognised to be the dominant paradigm, scant attention was often given to non-economic benefits of financial incentives in rural areas. This paper argues that rural financial schemes are often evaluated with quantitative criteria in spite of profound non-economic benefits such schemes have for community development. Evidence are presented from success stories in the developing world and fieldwork done in South Africa which reveal that successful rural financing are often determined by indicators of a qualitative nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]