Abstract:

The study presents empirical findings on the impact of Microfinance (MF) on the welfare and poverty alleviation in Southwest Nigeria.  As indicated in the literature, poverty is number one problem in the world today as depicted by the following startling statistics: three billion people live below US$2 per day (World Bank, 2001); one and half billion people live below US$1 per day; 70-90 per cent of people in the developing world are poor; poverty is number one of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs); and 75 per cent of the world poor are women. It seems as if all the strategies applied in the past to fight poverty have proved ineffective, but the world seems to have found a most promising strategy.