Most times I ask myself if it's just me that miss using kolo to save my money.. I can remember how I was so devoted in putting 10 naira or 20 naira in it after school and then in 3 or 4 months time i would break the box to calculate how much I have saved up and of course spend it all with my friends and start again.
But I never knew how Kolo or any other old ways of saving money started, I just found people doing it and I did it too.
The use of Kolo started a long time ago by the western people. Kolo was a small wooden box or a clay pot with a little hole in the middle where money can be squeezed into but can't easily come out until it's been broken.
While Esusu originated among the yoruba people, it describes a traditional form of cooperation in African societies whereby groups of individuals contribute to informal savings and credit associations for their mutual benefit. These associations are found mainly in agricultural production and credit financing, and they substitute for and complement modern cooperative institutions and formal financial systems.
Esusu describe means of informal financing, whereby individuals come together to further their individual and collective interests. This may take several forms. First, there are units that are aimed at mobilising savings but that engage in little or no lending. Second, there are lending units that engage in little savings mobilisation. Third, there are groups that engage in self-help finance and involve various types of savings, including rotating ones as well as those provided by licensed cooperatives
Ajo is another means of saving money which was also originated by the western people and a bit similar to Esusu.
The way ajo work is that a group of people come together to each put an agreed amount of money into savings each month, then at the end of every month, someone in the group takes all the money saved for that month, which is subsequently rotated among all the group members throughout the period of the monthly contribution.
Ajo can be done among colleagues in the office, traders, members of a community etc.
A coordinator is usually chosen among contributors who administers the contributions and hands over the money to whoever is next in line.
There are other means by which money was being saved before the creation of banks, money may not have been entirely safe but it helped a lot.
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