Women can change Africa with better financing

Making financing easily accessible to African women is critical if the continent is to attain the sustainable development goals or SDGs, Giovanie Biha, the deputy executive secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa, said on Tuesday.

She was speaking in Marrakesh, Morocco, at an event to discuss the African Women Leadership Fund, ahead of the fifth Africa Regional Forum on Sustainable Development.

Biha said adopting the right actions to integrate gender in Africa's economies will result in financial inclusion as well as guarantee women's economic empowerment and achievement of the SDGs, thereby helping transform the face of the continent.

Failure to integrate gender equality and women's empowerment into national economies has cost African countries a combined $95 billion in lost productivity annually, according to the UNECA's Women's Report published in 2013.

She said the African Women Leadership Fund aims at strengthening the economic empowerment of women and accelerating the emergence of African women fund managers who in turn will invest in and develop women-led businesses and micro businesses.

Over the next decade, the fund is expected to make an investment of up to $500 million in African-owned and women-led companies.

Moumina Houmed, Djibouti's minister of Women and Family Affairs, said the story of women and finance is similar in every African country. Her country has launched more capacity-building programs to further expand women's participation in building the economy.

"In family-owned businesses, women's earnings are much lower compared to their male counterparts. We have very few women entrepreneurs on the continent because of the hurdles to accessing finance. As such, the fund seeks to lower these hurdles faced by women-owned businesses, promote investments in micro enterprises and take women's cooperatives to the next level," said Nabila Freidji, a Moroccan entrepreneur and member of the AWLF committee.

Thoko Ruzvidzo, the director of the Gender, Poverty and Social Policy Division at UNECA, said funds will be earmarked for each of the five regions of North Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, West Africa and Southern Africa, with a strategy being established for each region to address unique elements of the markets, or to reflect priorities for each region.

Priority would be given to women-led businesses. At least 65 percent of capital will be invested in women-led companies.

Leila Rhiwi, a representative of UN Women in Morocco, emphasized the importance of women accessing finance to bolster their businesses, saying they have already proven themselves as entrepreneurs and drivers of the economy.

The high-level meeting was attended by representatives of the Moroccan business and financial ecosystem, government officials, senior women executives and young women entrepreneurs, among others.