Nigerian women entrepreneurs among 69,000 for AfDB $55m We-Fi round

BY MADUABUCHI EFEGADI

Dozens of Nigerian women entrepreneurs are to benefit from a $54.8 million new round of funding by the African Development Bank’s (AfDB) women entrepreneurs finance initiative, otherwise called We-Fi, under the AfDB Africa Digital Financial Inclusion Facility (ADFI).

This fourth round of financing of $54.8 million will benefit almost 69,000 women entrepreneurs in developing economies with access to digital technology and finance.

The ADFI would receive $15 million to develop and extend digital financial solutions to women-owned small and medium businesses in Nigeria, Cameroon, Egypt, Kenya, and Mozambique.

Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi), hosted by the World Bank Group, is a partnership among 14 governments, eight multilateral development banks (MDBs), and other public and private sector stakeholders. The African Development Bank is an implementing partner, and its Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa programme is a We-Fi initiative.

The funds will enable the Africa Digital Financial Inclusion facility to design and implement programmes to improve digital access to finance for women entrepreneurs, reducing the $42 billion financing gap, and improving their operational efficiency to build back better following the COVID-19 crisis.

According to AfDB, digital financial solutions are key to reducing the gender access-to-finance gap in Africa.

Africa suffers from a $42 billion financing gap due to poor governance by national governments of the continent.

Nigeria, the continent’s largest economy, is particularly harangued by a myriad of crises, including huge financial non-inclusion. Recent survey by EFinA (Enhancing Financial Innovation and Access), a financial sector development organisation that promotes financial inclusion in Nigeria, said 38.1 million adult Nigerians (18+ years) are not captured in the country’s financial inclusion. As of 2019, the country had only 79.3 million active bank accounts, according to statista.com.

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) had missed an 80 percent financial inclusion target by 2020. The country’s apex bank has shifted the goal post to 2024 to capture 95 percent adult financial inclusion.

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.”

Kofler said she was “pleased to see our implementing partners preparing such strong proposals to support women-led businesses. Access to technology and financing will be key to unlock the potential of women entrepreneurs.”

She added that digital financial solutions are key to improving the quality of life of people in Africa, and to reducing the gender access-to-finance gap.

For Stefan Nalletamby, director of the financial sector development department at the African Development Bank Group, “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.”

Meanwhile, the Africa Digital Financial Inclusion (ADFI) facility is a pan-African initiative designed to catalyse digital financial inclusion throughout Africa with the goal of ensuring that 332 million more Africans, 60 percent of them women, gain access to the formal economy by 2030.

Launched in 2019, ADFI works through the gender-intentional development of infrastructure, policies and regulations and product innovation. Current ADFI partners are the Agence Française de Développement (AFD); the Ministry for the Economy and Finance, France; the Ministry of Finance, Luxembourg; the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the African Development Bank, which hosts and manages the facility.