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r study is undertaken for the purpose of finding answers to the following questions and also other relevant questions that might crop up in the course of the studies. Answers to these questions will provide a solid base for making recommendations for this research. Below are the main questions this study seeks to find answers to;

Do microfinance institutions empower or worsen market women?

What is the risk associated in providing market women with funds?

What are the challenges market women faces in paying back the loans?

Objectives of the study
The purpose of this study is to identify the problems and prospects of Microfinance Institutions' in providing microfinance to market women so as to enhance their empowerment.

The following objectives have been set;

To examine Microfinance Institutions in relation to market women's financing.

To examine how Microfinance help empower market women.

To suggest recommendations that ensures effective financing of market women.

Justification of the Study
It is generally accepted that women are disproportionately represented among the world's poorest people. In the 1995 Human Development Report, the UNDP reported that 70 percent of the 1.3 billion people living on less than $1 per day are women. According to the World Bank's gender statistics database, women have a higher unemployment rate than men in virtually every country. In general, women also make up the majority of the lower paid, unorganized informal sector of most economies. These statistics are used to justify giving priority to increasing women's access to financial services on the grounds that women are relatively more disadvantaged than men. (Cheston and Kuhn, 2002)

Microfinance is much more than simply an income generation tool. By directly empowering poor people, particularly women, it has become one of the key driving mechanisms towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals, specifically the overreaching target of halving extreme poverty and hunger by 2015. (Mark Malloch Brown, Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 2001).

Access to financial services forms a fundamental basis on which many of the other essential interventions depend. Moreover, improvements in health care, nutritional advice and education can be sustained only when households have increased earnings and greater control over financial resources. Financial services thus reduce poverty and its effects in multiple, concrete ways. And the beauty of microfinance is that, as programs approach financial sustainability, they can reach far beyond the limits of scarce donor resources. Microfinance is not a mere financial instrument but a powerful tool for development to address multiple dimensions of poverty.

If the number of victims of extreme poverty and hunger is to be halved by the year 2015, then women have to be empowered to achieve this goal for themselves and their families.

Knowledge about contribution of microfinance would provide the basis for policies be geared toward streamlining the provision of microfinance to women to ensure the promotion of Women economic empowerment to enable reduce poverty and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, hence the need for the study.

Limitation of the study
The limitat