A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Award of the Degree of Master of Business Administration in Corporate Management (MBA-CM) to Mzumbe University.
The General Objective was to find out the extent to which savings and credit cooperatives contribute to poverty reduction in Tanzania. Specifically the study intended to examine whether savings and credit societies have successfully reached the target group in Tanzania, assess whether savings and credit societies provide affordable conditions and procedures for credit and lastly to assess whether savings and credit societies provide after loan business consultation services to little knowledgeable members. The study was carried out in Dar es Salaam and specifically in three municipalities namely Ilala, Kinondoni and Temeke.
Primary data was collected from a sample of 160 respondents using questionnaires and interviews, while secondary data was collected from various documents from savings and credit cooperatives. After data analysis was done, it was found that, while there is a remarkable level of awareness of the concept, the level of actual performance of SACCOS to reduce poverty in Dar es Salaam is still low, most of people are still looking at obtaining money and meet their immediate life challenges instead of investing the funds into either small business or other economic activities so as to multiply the obtained loan into profitable businesses. The study revealed that small savings and credit Cooperatives in Tanzania (Dar es salaam) was of importance to the people as it had helped people in mobilizing funds for loans, supporting low income groups to build savings, supporting small scale enterprises with subsidized loans to the extent that many people were now well off with their own valuable property and others self employed, giving business views and skills like book keeping skills, numerical skills project identification skills and communication skills to its members, offering affordable loans and offering financial advisory services to its members through various seminars.
It was concluded that, the establishment of Savings and credit cooperatives has played a positive role on the development of our societies and especially the employed class. The savings and credit cooperatives has led to easy financial accessibility in Dar es salaam and members who have accessed financial services from these SACCOS have used them well as others built good houses, others invested in education and others establish their small business and got profits which improved their financial status and hence improving their standards of living.