"A Calabash, Cash, and a Community: Women's Savings Associations in Urban Senegal."

Dr. Maimouna Barro's talk presents Rotating Savings Associations (ROSCAs) as community-based financial associations through which women in Senegal exercise their agency and negotiate their way from the periphery into the center to be part of Dakar’s urban dynamism. It then examines the role of ROSCAs as platforms for economic, human, social, and cultural capital for its members, and as unique people-focused forms of financing that are key to meaningful community-driven development.