Evans School Policy Analysis & Research Group (EPAR)

Self-Help Groups (SHGs) in Sub-Saharan Africa can be defined as mutual assistance organizations through which individuals undertake collective action in order to improve their own lives. “Collective action” implies that individuals share their time, labor, money, or other assets with the group. In a recent EPAR data analysis, we use three nationally-representative survey tools to examine various indicators related to the coverage and prevalence of Self-Help Group usage across six Sub-Saharan African countries. EPAR has developed Stata .do files for the construction of a set of self-help group indicators using data from the Living Standards Measurement Study - Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA), Financial Inclusion Index (FII), and FinScope.

We compiled a set of summary statistics for the final indicators using data from the following survey instruments:

• Ethiopia:
  • Ethiopia Socioeconomic Survey (ESS), Wave 3 (2015-16)
• Kenya:
  • Kenya FinScope, Wave 4 (2015)
  • Kenya FII, Wave 4 (2016)
• Nigeria
  • Nigeria FII, Wave 4 (2016)
• Rwanda:
  • Rwanda FII, Wave 4 (2016)
• Tanzania:
  • Tanzania National Panel Survey (TNPS), Wave 4 (2014-15)
  • Tanzania FinScope, Wave 4 (2017)
  • Tanzania FII, Wave 4 (2016)
• Uganda:
  • Uganda FinScope, Wave 3 (2013)
  • Uganda FII, Wave 4 (2016)

The raw survey data files are available for download free of charge from the World Bank LSMS-ISA website, the Financial Sector Deepening Trust website, and the Financial Inclusion Insights website. The .do files process the data and create final data sets at the household (LSMS-ISA) and individual (FII, FinScope) levels with labeled variables, which can be used to estimate summary statistics for the indicators.

All the instruments include nationally-representative samples. All estimates from the LSMS-ISA are household-level cluster-weighted means, while all estimates from FII and FinScope are calculated as individual-level weighted means. The proportions in the Indicators Spreadsheet are therefore estimates of the true proportion of individuals/households in the national population during the year of the survey. EPAR also created a Tableau visualization of these summary statistics, which can be found here.

We have also prepared a document outlining the construction decisions for each indicator across survey instruments and countries. We attempted to follow the same construction approach across instruments, and note any situations where differences in the instruments made this impossible.

The spreadsheet includes estimates of the following indicators created in our code files:

Sub-Populations

• Proportion of individuals who have access to a mobile phone
• Proportion of individuals who have official identification
• Proportion of individuals who are female
• Proportion of individuals who use mobile money
• Proportion of individuals who have a bank account
• Proportion of individuals who live in a rural area
• Individual Poverty Status
  • Two Lowest PPI Quintiles
  • Middle PPI Quintile
  • Two Highest PPI Quintiles

Coverage & Prevalence

• Proportion of individuals who have interacted with a SHG
• Proportion of individuals who have used an SHG for financial services
• Proportion of individuals who depend most on SHGs for financial advice
• Proportion of individuals who have received financial advice from a SHG
• Proportion of households that have interacted with a SHG
• Proportion of households in communities with at least one SHG
• Proportion of households in communities with access to multiple farmer cooperative groups
• Proportion of households who have used an SHG for financial services

Characteristics
In addition, we produced estimates for 29 indicators related to characteristics of SHG use including indicators related to frequency of SHG use, characteristics of SHG groups, and individual/household trust of SHGs.