Uganda: New IT system to boost Uganda's rural finance

Highway Africa News Agency

Uganda has just launched a government project to fight poverty. The project is locally referred to as "Bonna Bagaggawale" which literally means "let's all get rich." And to boost this rural financial scheme, government has also introduced a software system known as Loan Performer to ease the rural accounting system.

According to the developers, Crystal Clear Software, which has been working on management information system since 1998, the software, provides the right vehicle to drive financial service to rural Uganda.

Hans Verkoijen the Executive director of Crystal Clear Software says the software has been introduced in the sub-Saharan countries particularly Uganda to boost the recently launched Bonna Bagaggawale government project.

Bonna Bagaggawale was introduced last week and is being implemented by Uganda's ministry of Micro-finance. It gives low-interest loans to sub-country based Savings and Credit Cooperative Societies, popularly known as SACCOs.

The Micro-finance Ministry in Uganda, provides governence and regulates financial services, such as micro-credit, micro-savings or micro-insurance to poor people, by helping them to accumulate usably large sums of money - this expands their choices and reduces the risks they face.

Verkoijen said the software Loan Performer was designed and developed for rural financial institutions that perform those duties including rural banks, savings and credit co-operatives and Non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

"Loan performer has modules for client?s shares, savings, loans and accounting. They are tightly integrated so that one can pay or sell shares from or to the savings account and disburse loans to savings account and repay automatically from it," Verkoijen says.

"Everything is automatically booked into the ledger and at the end of the day you can just print the trial balance or income and expense statement," says Verkojjen.

He explains that among the Micro finance software programmes, Loan Performer is the most prominent in Africa.

"It is now a leading product in the micro finance industry both locally and internationally with a client base of about 170 organizations in East Africa," Verkoijen says.

He says loan Performer has been reviewed many times by the consultative Group to Assist the Poor, (CGAP) a World Bank institution and has come out as the best value for money given its many features and low costs.

As a way of promoting the micro finance sector, he says the Crystal Clear Software offers free use of the Loan Performer software for small organizations having up to 500 clients or loans.

"This is meant to be a stimulus to increase the growth of micro-finance institutions to serve more and more clients and to reach the targets of efficiency and self-sustainability faster", according to Mr. Verkoijen.

There is no case of fraud and people can?t mess up the data. It has a tight system with passwords for all users and limited access to menu items.

But it is not enough. One has to make sure that at the end of the day all financial data that has been punched in, printed out and signed or authorized by the right people, for that is the only way to build a reliable system.

Clear Software Ltd has emerged a winner of the African SMME Awards 2005 and received a Silver award in the fifth President's Export Awards for being the biggest exporter in the ICT category.

The company also received the Investor of the Year award 2003 for the best software developments by Uganda Investment Authority.