Extreme poverty ravages the lives of one in five persons (1.2 billion people worldwide). Many are cut off from provisions for basic human needs. Globally, two major trends act to increase their numbers: due to industrial development the productivity per head continues to increase, so production of a given unit involves ever fewer labourers. And with more efficient global trade, producers look abroad for ever cheaper labour: this competition exerts a steady downward pressure on wages of unskilled or semiskilled labourers, with a tendency to stabilise at subsistence level. Without protection of their rights, the poor are often employed under deplorable conditions, with a permanent threat of redundancy. The general long-term outlook for the poor seems to be: unemployment on the increase, and less income. Wealth and poverty are created simultaneously in the age of globalisation, the gap between rich and poor is again widening.

The globally systematised exclusion of people is unjust and unacceptable, and provides a strong moral consideration for development aid. Despite economic, spatial, cultural, religious, linguistic and political divisions, most people have a concern for fellow humans whose fundamental rights are violated. Huge efforts have indeed been made by countless people to offset these inequalities. Unfortunately, aid has often been ineffective or even counterproductive.

Microfinancing, however, has been shown to be an effective intervention under specific conditions. But its limitations and undesirable side-effects are now well-known: a major share of people is unable to satisfy the conditions for participation; effective interest payments often exceed the usual commercial rates by far; the overall rate of indebtedness often increases; impact-studies show a positive result mostly for creditors well above the poverty line; the poorer, the less likely that microfinancing is of any help; the feminization of debt is a well documented phenomenon; the result is often a structural transfer of net income from poor people towards a financial institution.

Though microfinancing can be a powerful and effective intervention, it obviously doesn't cure all poverty. Those who are excluded from microfinancing or any other help, deserve a different approach. Supplementary methods are needed: micropartnership is a solution where other aid fails.