Entrepreneurship and Microfinance-A tool for empowerment of poor-Case of Akhuwat, Pakistan

Abstract: Purpose: Our main purpose is to carry out a research on combining microfinance with entrepreneurship for poverty alleviation, empowerment of poor and sustainable development. Target group: Students, researchers in Microfinance field, MFI’s, NGO’s and Governmental structures. Research Question: How do micro entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship and microfinance serve as a combined tool to reduce poverty, empower people, and contribute to sustainable development in Pakistan? Approach: We used qualitative approach for research. The data have been collected through interviews which held as structured and unstructured, and as secondary sources web page of the organization, statistics of Pakistan and Book of organization have also been consulted. Delimitations: Due to distance problem between Pakistan and Sweden and, it was difficult to organize interviews at large scale from borrowers and this can reflect limited information about micro entrepreneurship. It is worthy to say here that Islamic microfinance is quite new practice and very limited data was available. With this, we mainly emphasized on microfinance and entrepreneurship as a combined tool, therefore, there is not enough discussion on Islamic microfinance. But we try to elaborate a complete picture of Islamic microfinance. Originality/value: This paper emphasizes on both Microfinance and Entrepreneurship, as case study we choose Akhuwat organization which started to give loans to poor people without interest. Also we focused on Social Entrepreneurship side of organization which challenges to other MFI’s with innovative type of loaning. Research will give a vision to Akhuwat and other micro financing organization that how they can develop activities more successfully. Future implications: During our research we investigate that there is need to carry out more research on lending methods other than solidarity group. The other area is micro entrepreneurship that needs to be more investigated by researcher because in developing countries micro business with only traditional ways will not be so successful. There will be need of more innovation in production system or in business processes. Islamic microfinance is quite new way for lending loan. It is needed that researcher of western world also do research on this method. So that clear result should come and method becomes more mature. Social Entrepreneurship also need to be discovered from many points, especially relation with profit and non for profit, public, private and nongovernmental models. Keywords: Entrepreneurship, Microfinance, Social Entrepreneurship Paper type: Master Thesis