The Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi) has announced a $15 million funding to the African Development Back’s Africa Digital Inclusion Facility(ADFI). The facility is meant to boost digital solutions to women-owned small businesses in Cameroon, Egypt, Kenya and Mozambique ad Nigeria and is expected to benefit over 69,000 women entrepreneurs in developing economies.
We-Fi is a collaborative partnership that brings together 14 governments, eight multilateral development banks (MDBs), and other public and private sector stakeholders, to address financial and non-financial constraints faced by women-owned/led small and medium enterprises in developing countries.
The extension of this facility is in line with We-Fi’s efforts to support women entrepreneurs by scaling up access to financial products and services, building capacity, expanding networks, offering mentors, and providing opportunities to link with domestic and global markets.
The digital financial sector has been instrumental in transforming lives in Africa and other emerging markets. The increase of digital lenders who have impacted small businesses is a good point of the importance of this sector.
“Digital financial solutions are key to improving the quality of life of people in Africa and to reducing the gender access-to-finance gap. This funding, which is complementary to the Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa Initiative (AFAWA), will be used not only to broaden access to finance for women small and medium businesses but also to provide an avenue for their increased economic empowerment and resilience,” said Stefan Nalletamby, Director of the Financial Sector Development Department at the African Development Bank Group.
This is the fourth round of funding by We-Fi and will culminate into a total of $54.8 million to ADFI.
Bärbel Kofler, Parliamentary State Secretary of Germany’s Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, said, “We-Fi’s fourth round of allocations comes at a crucial time. Women’s economic empowerment is under pressure due to conflict and insecurity, rising prices and the continuous fallout from the Covid pandemic around the world,”.
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