A Question for the economists out there...

I know a few of the people who read this have some economic background, even if only at an IR/Political "Science" level. Unfortunately, I come to this from the military history prong of the fork and I'm very much a disciple of the Alec Douglas-Home school of economics so I was wondering if anyone could provide and answer to this. All email much appreciated.

I was watching a documentary a few weeks ago in which a journalist for BBC Africa went on a bit of a tour about with former Ghanian president Jerry Rawlings. They chatted to various Africans in different countries at the grassroots level and one of the things that came up time and again was that African small businessmen frequently find it well nigh impossible to get credit. Thus, many African businesses never really have the opportunity to get off the ground and many good ideas are killed in the womb. What I'm wondering is this - if commercial banks are not prepared to deal in this sort of environment, would it be a worthwhile experiment to set aside a portion of the aid money to try to come up with some sort of a banking mechanism to extend credit the aspiring African businessmen? I'm aware that the loss rate on this would probably be high but the loss rate on African aid is very high anyway and while we write off millions upon millions of pounds worth of debt owed by corrupt or incompetant governments it seems to me that a lot of intelligent, motivated Africans are stuck in a rut for want of a few thousand quid's worth of startup funds.

As I say, I freely admit that I don't have a sound grasp of the dynamics behind this. I'd be very interested to hear from somebody who does.