When Joyce Musonda wanted to start a business two years ago selling kitchen tiles from her backyard in an up-and-coming district of Zambia's capital of Lusaka, she braced herself for a battle to find a start-up loan.Her predicament is common: around 80 percent of sub-Saharan adults have no bank accounts and struggle to access finance from banks reluctant to lend to new customers, especially the small entrepreneurs for whom they have no history.
Musonda's solution came from an unexpected quarter: she discovered that Zambia - wanting to encourage more middle-class business people like her - had set up a credit bureau to record her credit history and show her to be a reliable customer.
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