Vision: We Believe

Kuyasa’s work emerges from the belief that poor and low-income people are credit-worthy and should therefore be extended financial services to build sustainable homes and strong cohesive communities.

Mission: Working Together

Kuyasa provides housing microfinance services to South Africans because improving the quality of housing adds essential social value and because no other appropriate sources of housing finance are available to low-income households.

By facilitating access to housing finance, Kuyasa aspires to be an effective resource for improving the well being of low-income families in communities across South Africa.

Kuyasa supports the development of a financial sector for the poor through the provision and disbursement of small loans to homeowners who are typically excluded from formal finance.

By encouraging poor South African’s to mobilize their savings and apply for housing finance, Kuyasa strives to help people capitalize on their assets thereby ensuring financial stability.

South Africa enjoys a strong formal banking system that provides extensive services to the top of the pyramid (ie: the minority of the population that is able to access and take advantage of financial services).  The proportion of the population that remains unbanked presents a challenge to the potential for housing transformation in the country, with some 68% of the South African low-income population unable to access formal financial services and the majority of consumers relying on informal financial mechanisms.

In particular, there has been a widespread failure by the South African banking sector to respond to the need for finance of those homeowevers who qualify for the state housing subsidy.  Microfinance has proved suitable in helping to bridge this gap, providing demand-led, short-term loans to finance incremental building and supplying a suitable mechainism through which the poor have been able to build financial and social capital through investment in housing.