In Senegal 80% of the population does not have a bank account, many of those live day by day and struggle to be able to feed their family, which is often pretty large.
Money is almost impossible to save because of widespread poverty, and when people manage to set aside a bit someone comes along to ask for help for a funeral service or a medical prescription and in this culture a “NO” is not an answer.
On the wide shoulders of Senegalese women leans the whole of Senegalese society, especially on the women who have little means and big families, who, turns out, have shoulders as large as the Statue of Liberty’s. And it’s the women who invented a collective saving system that allows them to invest little amounts of money with the support of the entire community.
This system is called tontine (in French) and it works like this: a certain number of participants (say 12) commit to contribute a certain amount of money each month (say 15€). Each woman puts the money in at her ease (all upfront or little by little over the month as long as by the end of the month the money is secured) and each woman gets the jackpot (180 €) once a year. If the tontine has a large number of participants the jackpot is shared by many people.
The order in which women get the jackpot can be random, especially in the case of large groups, but in smaller settings participants’ needs are considered and the direst ones come first.
At the end of the year each participant gets the exact same money as if they saved it in a piggy bank (no interest is ever charged) with some non negligible differences:
1- No bank would ever lend money to someone who can’t provide a guarantor;
2- The first ones to get the money can count on an amount that would have taken a whole year to set aside;
3- Money is put into the tontine as soon as it comes in, that means that street vendors can pay by the day almost, limiting the risks of keeping the money at home and having to use it for something else.
4- participating in a tontine is a personal commitment towards a community, breaking the deal by not paying would be a shame and could shake family and social ties. A loan from a bank could be perceived as less binding, in a certain way.
5- participants support all members’ projects in which the money will be used, whether it is lauching/supporting a business, buying a piece of furniture or building a new room on the rooftop, each member chooses how to use their money but the whole community is behind it.
A tontine is a life saver for all those women who work their a** off and it’s still not enough: cleaning ladies, small business owners, tailors.
I know women who regularly participate in a tontine and have built their house back at the village, one room per year, year after year. A tontine can help get a new business off the ground, but a TV set, send your kids to school.
And it’s not just for the less fortunate, a friend recently invited me to join a tontine she has with some friends. In their tontine if someone can not pay her contribution one month, it’s the friend who invited her who has to pay for her (that is the rule in many tontines) and the social pressure put on the friendship bond is the boost to make sure people will go out of their way to pay their share.
Taking part in a tontine was for ages a women’s thing, set up and managed by women for women, also because accessing credit has always been harder for women, and also women’s access to informal credit (within the family, for example) has been hindered for a long time.
In the last twenty years also men are welcome, especially in smaller tontines, but the organizing and management is still firmly anchored in the hands of women.
I can’t wait to join one as well and feel the satisfaction of supporting other people’s projects and dreams.