Conflict Resolution and Problem Solving in Guinean Women's Collective Savings Groups

Background and Purpose: Financial inclusion interventions, such as microcredit and microfinance, are continuing to expand in size and scope in Sub-Saharan Africa with projected growth of over 10% annually, amounting to billions of dollars of total investment. This increase in available capital has the potential to promote bottom up economic development by funding thousands of small enterprises, many owned by women. However, several large microfinance institutions have recently been unsuccessful in the West African country of Guinea. This has been attributed to their inability to create culturally relevant services specific to this population. This study is part of a larger project that aims to develop knowledge around the long functioning systems of women’s cooperative organizations in Guinea, with an overall objective to use this knowledge to inform financial inclusion interventions and policy that affect this population, such as microfinance programs. Appropriate methods of addressing problems, both internal and external, are vital to understand when designing culturally grounded services for a population. This study asks: How do members of Guinean women’s savings groups address conflict?

Methods: 84 interviews were conducted with members of 12 different women’s savings groups in four neighborhoods in Conakry, Guinea in April and May of 2016. Groups at varying levels of formality were selected to capture maximal variation in group development. An interview guide that included questions on conflict in groups was used to gather qualitative data. Recordings of interviews were transcribed into French language transcripts and then translated into English. The resulting qualitative dataset was analyzed in multiple phases: provisional coding, a code-re-code strategy, code mapping, and finally focused coding to create a set of emergent thematic areas and related codes.

Results: The resulting thematic area, strategies for decision making and problem solving, includes the following three codes: consensus building, open communication, and public versus private resolution of problems. These three ideas, further described in sets of sub-codes, summarize the major strategies used by the groups in this sample to address conflict and make decisions in a way that reflect the cooperative nature of the group and the preference for solidarity over individual interest.

Conclusions and Implications: This study provides new information on how Guinean women’s savings groups address conflict and solve problems. Through the use of solidarity building methods to ensure positive group continuity by creating open, supportive spaces where all are treated equally, members are able to create groups that are resilient in a volatile economic and political context. Understanding these processes can inform how microfinance services interact with this population, and how potential pitfalls can be either avoided or addressed in culturally appropriate ways. Additionally, these methods of problem solving can inform social work interventions as an alternate, women-centric set of tools for addressing conflict in groups.