Women owned Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) will now be able to easily access financial aid for their businesses following the launch of the Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa (AFAWA) financial series.
AFAWA, a pan-African initiative of the African Development Bank (AfDB), aims at solving the challenges women entrepreneurs face in accessing funds for their businesses on the continent.
In order to achieve this, it seeks to reduce the USD 42 billion financial gap that affects women entrepreneurs in Africa and also unlock USD 5 billion in financing for SMEs owned and managed by women by 2026.
The launch of the series in Ghana, which is its third edition and the first in West Africa, was done by the African Development Bank Group (AfDG) in collaboration with the African Guaranteed Fund (AGF) and the Ghana Association of Banks (GAB).
The expectation of the AFAWA series in the country is to build on the existing AFAWA-AGF partnership by working together with other financial institutions to finance women SMEs as well as operate similar interventions across other regions in 2023.
Country Manager for Ghana at AfDB, Eyerusalem Fasika, highlighted the Bank’s commitment to gender equality by putting women’s economic empowerment at the centre of its High Five Gender Development Strategy and executing it through the strategy’s first pillar, the AFAWA series.
Group CEO of AGF, Jules Ngankam shared that the AFAWA series is committed in aiding women access loans from banks for their businesses.
“We have the highest rate of women entrepreneurs in the world but the lowest rate to access finance. The AFAWA Guarantee for Growth objective is to reinforce both human and financial capital so that these women can fully contribute to the growth of the continent. In addition, through AGF’s Capacity Development Assistance, AGF provides tailored technical assistance to Partner Financial institutions (PFIs) to develop the SME lending portfolio of the women,” he affirmed.
In a speech read on her behalf, President of the GAB, Mansa Nettey, assured the support of financial institutions for the series. “Through the initiative of AFAWA, AfDB is envisaged to work directly with financial institutions to improve their capacity to effectively serve women’s market and allow women-led businesses to thrive.”