Technical Brief: Who Were the Clients in the Building Assets, Unlocking Access Project?

Building Assets, Unlocking Access is a six-year project in Africa, which provided technical assistance to six leading financial institutions in Uganda and Kenya as they developed housing microfinance products and nonfinancial support services for people living on $5-10 per day. As the project comes to a close, project survey data is used to refresh understanding of the participating housing microfinance borrowers, their housing situations and use of housing finance, and the impact these loans have had on their quality of life.

As part of this research, 444 housing microfinance clients were interviewed in a baseline survey, and 213 of these were interviewed again as part of the follow-up survey. Though the survey results are fairly evenly distributed across the four institutions, the results are heavily skewed toward Uganda, as Kenya is reflected only by 25 percent of the results.