Women Empowerment through Rural Saving and Credit Cooperatives in Kolla Tembien Woreda, Tigray, Ethiopia

Women headed households suffer by a number of internal and external factors. The investigation of women empowerment through RUSACCOs has great importance both for policy makers and local government organs as well as whole community. Therefore, the concern of this study was to assess the major socio-economic and institutional factors that affect women empowerment through rural saving and credit cooperatives in Kola-Temben Woreda. In the course of this study, primary data were collected from 80 women members and 40 women non-members sample households. A survey was conducted using structured and semi-structured interview scheduale to collect primary data. Moreover, secondary data were also used to supplemented the primary data. Binary Logit model was used to identify the factors influencing women empowerment through rural saving and credit cooperatives in the study area. The result showed that there were 6 variables having a positive relationships with women empowerment and the rest shows negative relationship factors in explaining the dependent variable-women empowerment through RUSACCOs. The result revealed that 66.2% of women members and 35% of non-members were empowered through rural saving and credit cooperatives. Through providing women food, farmers’ easy access to credit, adequate training and installing in them the importance of saving, microfinance programmes enable women to engage in income-generating activities. Empowering women to be key change agents is an essential element to achieving the end of hunger and poverty, increase incomes and invest in their families and communities Women involvement in the rural saving and credit cooperative is equally important for economic development in Kola-Temben Destrict in particular and Ethiopia in general.