S7 Ep25: Roshaneh Zafar on 30 years of microfinance and mindset change in Pakistan

Wherever Roshaneh Zafar went in Pakistan in the early 1990s, documenting World Bank social development projects, women told her the same thing: the water and sanitation are fine, but what about economic opportunity?

Zafar tells Tim Phillips how that question led her to train with Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank, and then back to Pakistan to found Kashf Foundation in 1996 — the country's first specialised microfinance institution for women. Thirty years on, Kashf serves more than one million clients, has covered six million lives through micro-health insurance, and has financed over 3,000 low-cost private schools. Zafar describes a model that long ago outgrew its Grameen origins: customised for Pakistan's diversity, run on a partnership rather than a hierarchical footing, and now embracing climate risk, ultra-poor programmes and AI-assisted credit decisions.

The episode also confronts the question: Does microfinance actually empower women? Research has questioned whether it makes a difference. Zafar has ten years of longitudinal data that tells a different story, and a view on why the two bodies of evidence are not as contradictory as they appear.

Research and references discussed in this episode:

Banerjee, Abhijit, Esther Duflo, Rachel Glennerster, and Cynthia Kinnan. 2015. "The Miracle of Microfinance? Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation." American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 7(1): 22–53.

Rana, Annum Ather. 2025. Evidence on the Impact of Microfinance Program on Poverty Reduction and Income Security. Kashf Foundation Focus Note Series, April 

To cite this episode:

Phillips, Tim, and Roshaneh Zafar. 2026. "Roshaneh Zafar on 30 years of microfinance and mindset change in Pakistan." VoxDev Talk (podcast). 

Assign this as extra listening. The citation above is formatted and ready for a reading list or VLE.

About Roshaneh Zafar

Roshaneh Zafar is the founder and managing director of Kashf Foundation, Pakistan's first specialised microfinance institution. A development economist by training, she worked at the World Bank before leaving to found Kashf in 1996 after training under Muhammad Yunus at Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. Her work spans microfinance, micro-insurance, women's economic empowerment, low-cost private education and behaviour change communication. 

Research and context cited in this episode

Grameen Bank and the Grameen model. Founded by Muhammad Yunus in Bangladesh in 1983, Grameen Bank pioneered group-based lending to poor women without requiring collateral, on the premise that social accountability within borrower groups could substitute for asset security. Yunus received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. Kashf was established as a Grameen replicator but diverged significantly in its approach: hiring women loan officers from the outset, replacing the group hierarchy with a peer partnership model (using the Urdu term baji, meaning sister, for both client and staff), and adapting products for Pakistan's religious, linguistic and cultural diversity.

The 2008 microfinance delinquency crisis in Pakistan. Over-indebtedness, predatory lending practices and the absence of a credit information bureau led to a sector-wide delinquency crisis in Pakistan in 2008. Following the crisis, regulators, lenders and the Pakistan Microfinance Network introduced enhanced consumer protection standards and a credit bureau to prevent multiple borrowing. Kashf now limits lending to clients with no more than two active loans from any provider.

Banerjee et al. (2015) randomised controlled trial. The paper, a randomised evaluation of a microcredit expansion in Hyderabad, India by Spandana Sphoorty, found no statistically significant effect on women's empowerment, health, education or consumption over an 18-to-24-month follow-up period. It became the most-cited challenge to microfinance's development impact. Zafar's counter-argument turns on time horizon: empowerment, she argues, is a decade-scale process that short-panel RCTs cannot capture. A University of Minnesota longitudinal analysis of ten years of Kashf client data found a statistically significant positive correlation between the number of loans taken and business income, and between savings behaviour and subsequent business investment.

Behaviour change communication: theater and television. Kashf has used street theater for thirty years to communicate on topics including child marriage, girls' education, reproductive health and insurance take-up. After Zafar attended a conference session on the impact of telenovelas on gender norms in Brazil and Mexico, the foundation moved into television drama production, covering topics including child sexual abuse, human trafficking and cybercrime. A child sexual abuse drama prompted a legal notice from PEMRA (the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority), which was successfully contested. The dramas are produced with a media and creative team to ensure sensitive handling of difficult subjects.

The gender bond and gender sukuk. In 2005, Zafar rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange. The experience prompted a long-term ambition to connect micro women entrepreneurs to capital markets. Kashf subsequently issued a gender bond listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange, followed by a gender sukuk (Sharia-compliant bond) listed on the Luxembourg Stock Exchange — the first such instrument linking Pakistani microfinance to international Islamic capital markets.

Low-cost private schools. Research by Kashf found that clients, once they had access to income, were moving their children from public to low-cost private schools; teacher absenteeism in private schools was far lower. Further research showed 70% of these schools were run by women. Kashf began financing them; it now supports over 3,000 such schools, with a requirement that girls constitute at least 50% of enrolment.

More VoxDev Talks on this topic

Breaking down access constraints faced by women: Experimental evidence from Pakistan, a VoxDev Talk on how removing specific barriers to vocational training take-up shifts economic participation among women in Pakistan — the supply-side complement to Kashf's demand-side model.

How safe transport could unlock women's labour force participation in Pakistan, a VoxDev Talk on how mobility constraints suppress women's economic activity in urban Pakistan, and how subsidised women-only transport services can shift that.

Related reading on VoxDev

What have we learned about microfinance?, a VoxDev article reviewing the evidence base on microfinance impact, including the conditions under which credit does and does not produce lasting change in household welfare.

Women's microcredit groups empower women politically, a VoxDev article on evidence that participation in group lending schemes produces political voice and civic engagement even when economic empowerment effects are limited.

Empowering women through digital financial services, a VoxDev article on how mobile money and digital accounts give women a private, named financial identity — and what that does to their control over household resources.