Can Greed Save Africa?

Agriculture isn't sub-Saharan Africa's only investment draw. Microlending—the making of small, unsecured loans to ordinary people—is bringing in big profits for a raft of publicly traded companies all across the continent. Blue Financial is among a new breed of so-called salary-microlenders, which make loans only to formally employed borrowers and take payments directly from their paychecks. The set-up helps Blue manage its risks: Bad loans are only in the 3%-to-4% range, remarkably low in a part of the world where fewer than one in five people has a bank accoun