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The aim of this paper is to establish an original database from fieldwork on microfinance institutions in Cameroon.

The main method used for the research involved statistical analysis of an original survey data. The latter fieldwork analysis has enabled us to test the hypothesis of neoclassical and neo‐structuralist economists advocating a significant relationship between microfinance savings and liberalised real bank deposit interest rates.

The statistical analysis carried out indicated that microfinance savings are associated to variables other than the rate of interest. The failure of a liberalised interest rate policy to cause a significant portfolio shift from microfinance into the banking system does not support the interest responsiveness of savings as advocated by the McKinnon‐Shaw school. This paper supports, therefore, the neo‐structuralist analysis of financial development where microfinance institutions are an important structural feature of financial systems in many developing countries.

It would be interesting to extend statistical analysis undertaken in this paper to other African countries.

The main policy issue affecting microfinance from the empirical analysis is the need to mitigate the extremely high interest rates utilised by microfinance. Banks may be encouraged to undertake a series of measures such as guaranteeing of future loans to their customer by linking savings and loans to attract microfinance members.

The contribution of this paper, therefore, is to provide a unique opportunity to investigate the association between microfinance institution assets and real interest rates in an African country.

This paper aims to examine how an alternative accounting system developed by a marginalised group of women enables them to counter oppressive systems built at the intersections of gender, class and race.

The authors draw on diary notes taken over a period of 13 years in France and Senegal in the context of the first author's family interactions with a community of ten Black immigrant women. The paper relies on Black feminist perspectives, namely, Lorde's work on difference and survival to illuminate how this community of women uses the creative power of its “self-defined differences” to build its own accounting system – a tontine – and work towards its emancipation.

The authors find that to fight oppressive marginalising structures, the women develop a tontine, an autonomous, self-managed, women-made banking system providing them with cash and working on the basis of trust. This alternative accounting scheme endeavours to fulfil their “situated needs”: to build a home of their own in Senegal. The authors conceptualise the tontine as a “situated accounting” scheme built on the women's own terms, on the basis of sisterhood and opacity. This accounting system enables the women to work towards their “situated emancipation”, alleviating the burden of their marginalisation.

This paper gives visibility to vulnerable women's agentic capacities through accounting. As no single story captures the nuances and complexities of accounting, further exploration is encouraged.

This paper contributes to the counter-accounting literature that engages with vulnerable, “othered” populations, shedding light on the counter-practices of accounting within a community of ten Black precarious women. In so doing, this study problematises these counter-practices as intersectional and built on “survival skills”. The paper further outlines the emancipatory potential of alternative systems of accounting. It ends with some reflections on doing research through activist curiosity and the need to rethink academic research and knowledge in opposition to dominant epistemic standards of knowledge creation.

Equity crowdfunding offers a wide audience – the crowd – the possibility of financing a business project by choosing the beneficiary in accordance with the positive impact of the investment on society or the environment. This new funding mode may be located between venture capital and microcredit. In Africa, the phenomenon is embryonic but could find its place in the microfinance system since it is based on the widespread traditional model of “tontines.” We first observed the crowdfunding platforms dedicated to Africa and conducted interviews in Gabon with microfinance institutions and small business owners. This empirical work then led us to mobilize new institutional theory to suggest a conceptual broadening of the participatory financing system, with a view to enhancing local economic development in Africa.

The sector of interdependent venture capital in France will be detailed henceforth. We will try to understand why its investments deserve to be called ‘interdependent’.