Microfinance was hailed as a way to change the lives of hundreds of millions of people without access to credit. It worked so well that Grameen Bank founder Muhammad Yunus was awarded a Nobel Prize. But then, banks jumped in to get in on the profits. To manage high debt levels, Cambodians are migrating for work, eating less and even pulling their children out of school.
Microfinance is not the same thing as the gig economy.
I get the differences, but there are similarities, microfinance is just the banking world’s version of the gig economy, still predatory in nature, still exploiting the poor under the guise of helping the poor.