La microfinance et la gestion des risques de vulnérabilité par les ménages ruraux au Sénégal[Microfinance and Vulnerability Risk Management by Rural Households in Senegal]

The development of microfinance has enabled millions of low-income actors around the world, who did not have access to conventional financing systems, to access financing for their production and / or consumption activities. In Senegal, the activities of Decentralized Financial Systems (DFS) have been growing dynamically for almost three decades (Drs-Sfd, 2018). Thus, the new approach advocated by the microfinance sector has led to a diversification of supply (Labie, 2009) and greater openness to the rural world, but above all to an increase in the overall scope of the financial sector, which is around 20.6%, of which 12.1% is carried by the microfinance sub-sector (ANSD, 2016), driven mainly by the SFDs. The development of financial services in rural areas should result in a better consideration of the needs of actors, particularly households, who often struggle to access quality financial services, meeting their needs, in terms of specificities. And adequate and timely amounts. The latter are often confronted with covariant risks, which make them vulnerable to endogenous and exogenous shocks, the management of which often requires the use of appropriate tools. Thus, this paper aims to analyze, in a detailed way, how rural households use the services offered by the DFS in order to face the risks of vulnerability that they face. The notion of vulnerability refers to the capacity or the incapacity of the actors to be able to prevent shocks, to manage them and to be able to get out of them in case of occurrence of these.