Michael Landau Wants More Microfinance in Africa | Big Think

Michael Landau Wants More Microfinance in Africa

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Modern banking institutions would greatly improve the effectiveness of microlending.

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Mr. Landau:

Mr. Landau is the Chairman of MAP International. He is an entrepreneur who has built a portfolio of ventures in real estate, mortgage banking, information and communication technologies, and advanced banking solutions. He also serves as Chairman of MAP International’s sister company, MAPcash.

Mr. Landau is a former board member of Regalian PLC, a British real estate development company.

Mr. Landau has been an invited speaker at several conferences and forums, among them a presentation on “Africa’s Industrial Drive: The Private Sector and Corporate Citizenship” at the African Union/U.N. Global Compact Private Sector Forum in Addis Ababa. At this event MAP International was featured as “best practice.” Mr. Landau was also an invited speaker at the CHOGM, the Commonwealth Business Forum in November 2007 in Uganda, and was recently an invited speaker at the AOSIS/United Nations Foundation and Friends on Climate Change Roundtable, hosted by the Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations.

Active in community-based initiatives, Mr. Landau has hosted and chaired several political forums and meetings with the New York City Police Department. He is the chairman of the Council of Orthodox Jewish Organizations of Manhattan (New York City), an umbrella group representing the Jewish community to government and political leaders. He also has extensive experience interfacing with UN leaders as a community representative—a relationship that began when he initiated the creation of a UN special stamp edition in remembrance of the International Day of Commemoration for Victims of the Holocaust.

Mr. Landau was recently invited to serve on the board of the World Sports Alliance, an intergovernmental organization whose mission is to use sport as a catalyst to design and implement programs to realize the UN’s Millennium Development Goals. He received his bachelor's degree from the London School of Economics and a master's degree in real estate development and finance from New York University. He received his law degree from Yeshiva University's Cardoza School of Law and is admitted to practice law in New York, New Jersey, and the District of Columbia. He and his wife reside in New York City with their four children.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Question: How will your company affect Africa’s microfinance industry?

Michael Landau: Microfinance has not been widely recognized by the world as being a major stimulant for local economies in developing countries. Muhammed Yunus with the Grameen has proven in Bangladesh and other places that when you give people small amounts of money, they can, now, take that. So they can, instead of having...

I’ll use the goat example. Instead of having one little goat, they can borrow a little bit of money and get the two goats, produce the third and fourth and fifth goat. And now, they’ve got money that they can, now, go and buy more fertilizer and grow more oranges or more mangoes. And it creates a multiplier effect in the rural areas. These people have also demonstrated that there’s a good repayment, very strong repayment rate for these people who borrow the microfinance.

The challenge of a microfinance in a country like Uganda and many other countries is, Uganda, according to the statistics that we have, which, again, I’m not going to vouch for the veracity and the authenticity of the statistics, but there’s roughly 400,000 loans, microfinance loans in Uganda, which is a percentage of the 32 million plus people that live in Uganda is a minuscule amount considering that the majority, the vast majority of the country, you know, kind of live in poverty.

So it’s a shame that there aren’t more. The question is why are there not more microfinance loans. In addition, they don’t know how many unique people have those 400,000 loans, was it somebody who is clever enough to get 10 loans, 15 loans using different identities or going to different banks.

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