Uganda Microfinance Union (Umu): A Case Study

The Uganda Microfinance Union (UMU) has become one of Uganda?s leading microfinance institutions. It began four years ago with a small equity loan of about US$30,000 and has grown to US$1.5 million in total assets. Through a network of five branches, UMU serves16,577 clients (70% women), all of whom savers and 63% are borrowers. As of July 2001, UMU?s outstanding loan portfolio was US$1 million and savings were over US$400,000. It is diversified: 50% of its portfolio is in trade, 35% in agriculture, 12% in services, and 3% in manufacturing. Its repayment rate has remained at 98% or above. Its operational sustainability is 111% and its financial selfsustainability 92%. What factors have contributed to UMU?s success? --

Women And Men In Rural Microfinance: The Case Of Uganda

Uganda, where 85 % of the population live in rural areas, has experienced a rapid rise of rural and microfinance over the last ten years. There is a pronounced gender awareness in public policities and programs. Best practices have been mastered by institutions in the formal and the NGO sector. In the latter, women dominate as borrowers. Yet, as the vast majority still have no access to deposit and credit services, expansion of outreach remains as the biggest challenge. Rapid expansion of sustainable financial services to women is best achieved in Uganda not through women-only programs, but by a broad range of financial institutions with unbiased services to both women and men, the poor and the near-poor. NGO-supported microfinance institutions (MFIs), through group lending up to a ceiling, have provided start-up finance, particularly for women; but this has added borrower transaction costs and restricted growth. In Centenary Rural Development Bank and some MFIs, voluntary savings and individual lending to enterprising men and women have fostered sustainable farm and nonfarm business growth beyond the poverty line, creating at the same time employment opportunities for the very poor. Under the prevailing conditions of a conducive policy environment, diversified agricultural and microenterprise opportunities, good practices in agriculture and microfinance, and effective agency coordination, the most effective means of donor assistance are equity investments in rural banks to extend their branch network and staff; equity investments in MFIs to transform into regulated deposit-taking institutions; support to banks and MFIs for staff selection and training; the facilitation of linkages between MFIs and banks; and the development of gender-sensitive strategies in different culture areas of Uganda based on the differential analysis of customer information in each institution?s management information system. --

Dusty Donuts: Modeling the Reverberation Response of the Circumnuclear Dusty Torus Emission in AGN

The obscuring circumnuclear torus of dusty molecular gas is one of the major components of AGN (active galactic nuclei), yet its size, composition, and structure are not well understood. These properties can be studied by analyzing the temporal variations of the infrared (IR) dust emission from the torus in response to variations in the AGN continuum luminosity; a technique known as reverberation mapping. In a recent international campaign 12 AGN were monitored using the Spitzer Space Telescope and several ground-based telescopes, providing a unique set of well-sampled mid-IR and optical light curves which are required in order to determine the approximate sizes of the tori in these AGN. To help extract structural information contained in the data a computer model, TORMAC, has been developed that simulates the reverberation response of the clumpy torus emission. Given an input optical light curve, the code computes the emission of a 3D ensemble of dust clouds as a function of time at selected IR wavelengths, taking into account light travel delays. A large library of torus reverberation response simulations has been constructed, to investigate the effects of various geometrical and structural properties such as inclination, cloud distribution, disk half-opening angle, and radial depth. The effects of dust cloud orientation, cloud optical depth, anisotropy of the illuminating AGN radiation field, dust cloud shadowing, and cloud occultation are also explored in detail. TORMAC was also used to generate synthetic IR light curves for the Seyfert 1 galaxy, NGC 6418, using the observed optical light curve as the input, to investigate how the torus and dust cloud properties incorporated in the code affect the results obtained from reverberation mapping. This dissertation presents the most comprehensive investigation to date showing that radiative transfer effects within the torus and anisotropic illumination of the torus can strongly influence the torus IR response at different wavelengths, and should be accounted for when interpreting reverberation mapping data. TORMAC provides a powerful modeling tool that can generate simulated IR light curves for direct comparison to observations. As many types of astronomical sources are both variable and embedded in, or surrounded, by dust, TORMAC also has applications for dust reverberation studies well beyond the AGN observed in the Spitzer monitoring campaign

Women and Men in Rural Microfinance: The Case of Jordan

Rajwa is a 50 years old widow in the area of Karak, with five children. Her husband died 10 years ago. In January 2000, she received a collateral-free loan of JD 2,100 (US$ 3,000) from the ACC/IFAD Income Diversification Project, repayable over 8 years. She bought 20 sheep, which have increased to 24, and went into dairy production. By September 2001, she had sold only 2 kg of goat butter and 6 kg of jameed. Everybody produces jameed and butter, there is no market, she says. She has made two payments of JD 30 each, which covers less than the interest due. ACC keeps writing letters and visiting her, but to no avail. With a loan of JD 200 for 8 months, less than one-tenth of the actual loan amount and period, Rajwa could have purchased the equipment and bought milk for dairy production instead of raising sheep. This would have given her the opportunity of testing the market and her entrepreneurial skills at a manageable risk. Now she is stuck with a bad loan and ineligible for another to go into a more profitable line of business. It was the loan terms imposed on her that made her start big - and fail big. She would like to apply for a loan to buy a sewing machine at a cost JD 120; but she is a defaulter, and the amount is too small to be financed from an ACC loan. --

Perorata sin fin

Martina y el egotista. Agustín Morales Riveira. Editorial La Serpiente Emplumada, Bogotá, 2001, 286 págs

Effect of Boundary Conditions on Propagation and Morphology of Premixed Flames in Narrow Conduits

Boundary conditions play a key role in the evolution and morphology of flame fronts, especially when combustion occurs in narrow chambers. The burning intensity and the flame-generated flow can be significantly modified by the momentum and energy transferred at the walls, which are further modified by the exothermal nature of the process. In this work, the effect of the wall roughness and thermal conditions on the flame propagation is explored. Specifically, conduits with and without obstacles, having adiabatic or isothermal walls, are investigated.;Wall friction constitutes one of the main reasons of spontaneous flame acceleration in narrow pipes. Although this phenomenon has been intensely studied, the researchers have focused on the mechanistic scenario of the combustion intensification, induced by the wall friction, putting less emphasis on the heat exchanged at the walls. In this study, besides the adiabatic condition, the surfaces have been kept at multiple constant temperatures in order to explore the wall thermal effects on the burning process, recognizing its potential to diminish or even quench the reaction.;Moreover, the inclusion of solid obstacles at the pipe walls provides a mechanism of extremely fast flame acceleration, which is driven by an intense jet-flow generated by the delayed combustion occurring between obstacles. In this work, the flame dynamics promoted in the obstructed configuration is analyzed, comparing the attained acceleration rates to other mechanisms such as that generated by the wall friction and the so-called finger flame evolution.;For this purpose, a parametric study provided by extensive fully-compressible numerical simulations of the combustion and hydrodynamic equations is performed. The geometry is primary given by 2D channels, although cylindrical \u27smooth\u27 tubes have been also considered. The wall conditions include non-slip walls and slip walls with obstacles; adiabatic and isothermal, with the fuel characterized by the thermal expansion coefficient. Four regimes of flame propagation in isothermal \u27smooth\u27 channels have been identified, for flames propagating a distance around 100-150 times the flame thickness: (i) no flame propagation or extinction; (ii) linear flame velocity; (iii) almost-constant flame propagation speed; and (iv) oscillating flame velocity. In the obstructed configuration, the developing of turbulent and laminar combustion regimes at the early stages of the process have been identified in relation to the obstacles size and spacing, including a finger flame-like limit when small enough obstacles are in place

Thermal analysis of tilted roofs composed of two separated surfaces

Due to the rising power costs and lack of nonrenewable energy sources, the cooling of houses is becoming more expensive. Looking for alternative methods applicable to this process is becoming not only an option, but also a necessity. Changes in the roof structure of buildings can be applied in order to achieve a more favorable thermal transmission behavior. The utilization of a tilted roof, composed of two separated surfaces, generates natural convection currents in the channel between them. These currents, after driving off part of the transferred heat, decrease the temperature of the lower surfaces and consequently, the heat flux through the ceiling into the living areas.;The natural convection phenomenon is treated by numerical means, and the influence of the dimensions of the proposed design on the ventilation rates is analyzed in order to determine the most efficient geometry. The comparison of thermal performances between the proposed roof and a typical unventilated design is also established in order to realize the quantitative advantage of the proposed model.;Results show that the separation between surfaces strongly influences the process within certain values; i.e. a reduction in the heat flux through the ceiling achieved by the system of 32.9% can be raised to 45.4% by increasing the width of the channel from 0.05m to 0.15m, and keeping the other dimensions constant. Moreover, higher tilt angles also improve natural ventilation rates. For example, a 32.8% reduction obtained by the system at a 30 degree tilt angle grows up to 41.6% by raising the tilt angle to 65 degrees. A vertical extension or exhaust channel on the top increases the reduction of heat flux too, but with less intensity. In this sense, the heat flux reduction achieved by the system, when the vertical exhaust length is 12.5% of the length of the roof, increases from 32.9% to 45.5% when a considerably bigger vertical extension is used, 60% of the roof length