Community group savings and lending (CGSL) in South Sudan is often described through the familiar category of the Rotating Savings and Credit Association (ROSCA). This article argues that such a description is too narrow. Drawing on a mixed-methods thesis dataset from Eastern Equatoria, Jonglei and Lakes States, the paper maps CGSL as a diverse institutional ecology that combines rotating savings, village savings and loan associations, savings and internal lending committees, welfare funds, NGO-facilitated micro-lending, village-bank practices and cooperative forms of social collateral. The study used survey data from 81 valid respondents out of a target sample of 85, supported by qualitative interviews with 17 participants. Descriptive findings show that 69% of respondents were male, 31% female, 68% primarily engaged in farming and 53% active members of savings groups. Across the three states, the strongest perceived service areas were government-donor collaboration, alternative access to credit for the poor, small regular saving, savings mobilisation and VSLA-type intervention. Hypothesis testing indicated a statistically significant association between CGSL participation and agricultural productivity indicators, χ² = 15.92, df = 2, p = 0.0001. Logistic regression further showed that access to CGSL credit significantly influenced the decision to invest in modern agricultural technologies, β = 1.9459, p = 0.026, with an estimated odds ratio of about 7.00. The qualitative themes revealed CGSLs as holistic support systems, capacity-building platforms, alternative financial systems and NGO-dependent but locally meaningful institutions. The article concludes that policy should move beyond treating ROSCAs as a single informal practice and instead build a graduated rural finance architecture that links self-managed savings groups to extension services, risk protection, formal financial institutions and conflict-sensitive agricultural development.
Toch et al. (Fri,) studied this question.
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