Being able to take care of oneself and one’s children is a great achievement. Emile and Moza, a couple living in Bujumbura, Burundi, have managed to do this with hard work and initiative. The change came when they became members of a community microcredit group.
Emile and Moza are husband and wife. They live in Buenzy, the working-class neighbourhood in the centre of Bujumbura, the financial capital of Burundi. He is a mechanic, she embroiders cloth. Both are members of the Duterintambwe micro-credit group, supported by AMU’s project It can be done! together with their local partner CASOBU.
Emile and Moza are a couple who have always worked hard to improve their living conditions. Their modest brick house is the result of hard work and toil. They had the idea of renting out some rooms, but the tenants never paid the rent on time: “We had hoped to earn some money to cover other expenses”. The situation made it difficult to live together. Moreover, financial difficulties were always at the door.
The turning point came in 2021. Moza was the first in her family to learn about the savings and microcredit groups, thanks to awareness-raising activities carried out in her neighbourhood. Once again, she did not lose heart and realised that this could be an excellent opportunity. She attended some training sessions to study how community microcredit works. She decided to do what she could to achieve a new goal and convinced her husband to be involved too: “Microcredit would certainly provide solutions to our economic problems”.
Thanks to access to credit, Emile and Moza intensified their work. Their embroidery business has grown: they now buy, hem and resell more textiles than before. Emile started a new project: the sale of small spare parts. Their living conditions have improved, and their children no longer lack anything.
There is another aspect of this story that deserves to be mentioned. Moza has also involved her tenants, who have joined the micro-credit group, which has meant they’ve been able to pay their rent. And relations are no longer as tense as before.
The couple has no intention of stopping there. They want to renovate the brick house and have electricity: that would be another big change.