Essma Ben Hamida, pioneer of microfinance in Tunisia

Essma Ben Hamida is a former Tunisian journalist and entrepreneur who contributed to the development of microcredit in Tunisia. In 1990, she co-founded with her husband, Enda Inter-arabe, an international development NGO, which introduced microfinance in Tunisia towards the end of the 1990s, precisely in 1995. The organisation has around a hundred agencies in the country to date.

Essma Ben Hamida defines herself as an activist for financial and social inclusion and development. In nearly thirty years of involvement in micro-credit, she has reached nearly a million micro-entrepreneurs.

After graduating in geography and history from the University of Tunis in the 1970s, she began her career in the media as a journalist, a profession that fascinated her. She then obtained a grant to study urban planning. She went to Paris and then to New York. She finally gave up her studies, after being hired in 1978 as a journalist and correspondent for Tunis Afrique Presse at the UN. She stayed in the United States for three more years and was recruited in 1981 as a journalist-correspondent in Rome by the International Foundation for Alternative Development and Inter Press Service. She was responsible for covering the development activities of all UN agencies, including FAO, WHO, the United Nations Development Fund (UNDP) and Italian and international NGOs based in Rome. This experience allowed her to discover the challenges of financing and access to markets by women in Africa. During her stay in Rome, she also met Michael Cracknell, a British at the UN Office, whom she later married.

Introducing microcredit in Tunisia

In 1989, the couple decided to return to Tunisia and settle there. Frustrated by the slow pace of development despite the countless United Nations resolutions and development programmes, they decided to adapt the microcredit concept inspired by the founder of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, Muhammad Yunus, to the country. The couple relied on the international NGO Enda Tiers Monde and decided to focus on women like the Grameen Bank.

In 1990, they founded Inter-arabe (Enda-ia) which is part of the Enda Third World Network. From 1993, the association worked on sustainable development and the inclusion of vulnerable populations. From 1995, it turned to micro-credit. In 2015, Enda Inter-Arabe created a microfinance company, Enda Tamweel, specialised in micro-credit and micro-insurance. The organisation has about a hundred agencies in Tunisia which have assisted nearly a million microentrepreneurs, 60% of whom are women to date. In nearly 30 years, Enda has granted loans worth nearly 6,000 million dinars.

Given her involvement in the development of microcredit in Tunisia, Essma Ben Hamida has received several distinctions and awards. In 2010, she was elected “Best Social Entrepreneur” by Schwab Foundation. She also chaired for several years the Board of Directors of Sanabel, the microfinance network of Arab countries.