Kiva conducts regular, ongoing monitoring of all Lending Partners, but only posts status updates here in response to relevant, major changes at the partner.

Status update — April 13, 2016

Kiva has learned that Motorbank Kenya is closing due to financial and operational problems. For the last 24 months, Kiva has been working to try to recover the remaining outstanding amounts due to Kiva lenders. Kiva’s present assessment is that this Lending Partner is unable to make further payments as they are no longer operating, and thus the remaining $13,762 in outstanding amounts due to Kiva lenders has now been defaulted, and Kiva's partnership with this partner is now closed.

Status update — October 8, 2014

Kiva has decided to pause its partnership with Motorbank, resulting in this experimental partner no longer posting new loans to the Kiva website. Motorbank Kenya is in default of their loan agreement with Kiva. Motorbank has a total outstanding balance of $47,699.73, of which $33,485 is past due. Motorbank has only remitted one repayment to Kiva in the amount of $1,000. Kiva will continue to work with Motorbank to attempt to recover repayments over the coming months.

Partner Description:

Motorbank Kenya is a microfinance institution that helps people purchase their own bikes. It’s the only social enterprise organization that specializes in hire purchase plans that enable its customers to acquire motorcycles and play a positive role in the community while enhancing their livelihoods.

Today, one of the main challenges facing the community health worker system in Kenya is transportation due to poor infrastructure  and long distances to be covered in remote locations. Aiming to ease transportation challenges and help community health workers provide on-time sergvices, Motorbank developed a loan product called BodAfya.

This loan product targets two types of borrowers with slightly different terms: 

(1) Community Health Workers (CHWs) who take out a motorcycle loan to spend 2 to 3 days per week in their community health work and the other days engaged in other motorcycle service activities to earn extra income. Motorbank offers CHWs an extended loan term (18 months) and lower deposit requirement to make the motorcycle affordable to them.

(2) Boda-boda (motorcycle taxi) drivers who take out a loan to purchase a motorcycle and commit to spending one day per week driving a CHW to his or her community health visits. Motorbank assigns each motorcycle taxi driver to a specific CHW  for the purpose of offering free transportation for health outreach. The loan term for these motorcycle taxi drivers is 12 months, and the deposit is higher. 

Activities covered by CHWs include patient visits, monitoring of ARVs and TB drug use and compliance, reproductive health consultations, mother-child health counseling, and leading community malaria control and hygiene health messages. The BodAfya loan product will go a long way toward enhancing and supporting  community health outreach.

Kiva lenders’ funds are used to expand this loan product for both CHWs and motorcycle taxi drivers who commit to drive CHWs at least one day per week over the 18-month term of the loan. In addition, the funds will enable Motorbank to decrease the requested deposit amount and charge a lower interest rate on this particular loan product.

A unique lending approach

The BodAfya loan product is offered to CHWs and motorcycle taxi drivers who commit to providing transportation to expand community health outreach. 

For CHWs, this loan allows them to reach more people during their community health visits, which they do 2 to 3 days per week. When not using the motorcycle for community outreach activities, CHWs will use the motorcycle in micro-business activities such as community taxi service, community courier service, and milk delivery service. The prospect of extra income from these activities is a big incentive to the CHWs, who are mostly young and at the beginning of their careers in the health sector. 

For motorcycle taxi drivers, this loan product will commit them to driving a CHW one day per week. Once a day ride is completed -- normally after 6 to 8 hours -- the driver will have his or her individual job card stamped by the CHW supervisor, and the card will be sent to a Motorbank agent who will record the information and share it with the Motorbank office in Nairobi.