On 28-29 March, the Graça Machel Trust (GMT) partnered with Finmark Trust to hold a workshop on gender and financial inclusion. The workshop arose out of a decision of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) Financial Inclusion Forum for a regional workshop to focus on factors and barriers to womenâs financial inclusion. Sub-Saharan Africa is ranked third in the world in the gender gap on financial inclusion. While member states are making progress on financial inclusion, more efforts are required to address gender disparities in this sector.
GMTâs partnership was anchored on its practical experiences with New Faces New Voices (NFNV) Women In Finance, our research on financial inclusion and women entrepreneurs and our process of securing financing and loans for entrepreneurs participating in the African Food Basket. The workshop attracted representation from SADC member states with a mixed delegation of officials from government, central banks, and the private sector.
Notably, the Deputy Governor of the Bank of Zambia, Dr. Tukiya Kankasa-Mabula a renowned champion of womenâs financial inclusion in the SADC region, presented the key note address at the workshop on Zambiaâs 10 year journey towards in womenâs financial inclusion. She recognized leadership has been key and that together with her Governor, a He4She Champion, they put in place a five Point Plan and led many precedent setting transformation. They have institutionalized gender mainstreaming at the bank to educate on gender equality and these processes have enabled more women in leadership positions. They are working with the Global Banking Alliance banks in Zambia to train financial institutions and promote the use of the ILO Famos self-audits tool for banks to assess their service provision to women. They have also pioneered innovation and legislation allowing for women to present alternative forms of collateral.
Mrs Graça Machel’s address echoed on supporting womenâs greater participation in the formal economy, she emphasized that women need to have a financial identity which at a basic level means for them to have a bank account. She challenged SADC member states to work cohesively to close the gender gap and to have clear targets to achieve. With the regional and some national financial inclusion strategies in place, it is important to have reliable updated data to track the progress on implementation.
She relayed the history of NFNV and the innovative work being championed by its national chapters since the inception of the network in 2009. She also alluded to the strides our newer networks such as the Network of African Business Women (NABW) and African Women in Agribusiness (AWAB) are making in building womenâs entrepreneurial capacity and their access to markets and finance through the Women Creating Wealth and African food Basket programmes.
AWAB Malawi together with partner Shared Interest, shared lessons from their experience in preparing and eventually securing a group loan for seven entrepreneurs involved in the African Food Basket Project. From them we learnt that it is equally important to focus on the supply side as well as the demand side of womenâs financing options. That as much as thorough preparation is required on the part of women, banks and lenders also need to change their perceptions of women as risky and to also permit alternative forms of collateral for women. Shared Interest, a guarantee funder provided 75% of collateral in support of the entrepreneursâ loan application.
Our presenters shared that it took great effort and countless attempts, some of which were unsuccessful. This requires perseverance and in the words of Ms Martha Nkhoma of AWAB Malawi: âA quitter never wins and a winner never quitsâ. This is the kind of attitude required to dismantle and challenge the biases against women with regards to the financial sector. By using test cases like AWAB Malawi and the African Food Basket, we slowly begin to remove the institutional and behavioural barriers that prevent womenâs access to finance.
The workshop was also alerted to new ideas to not only address womenâs short-term needs, but also their long-term financial stability; specifically looking at womenâs access to pensions, investments for security in old age and retirement, as well as the sustainability of their businesses.
Read more on our Women’s Economic and Social Advancement programme
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