AfDB Approves Gender Equality Trust Fund For Women’s Economic Empowerment

April 06, 2020

Abidjan, Ivory Coast, April 6 (Infosplusgabon) – The African Development Bank Group Board of Directors approved a new Gender Equality Trust Fund (GETF) to promote gender equality and empowering women across the continent.

Funded by donors, GETF will support the implementation and scaling up of the Bank’s Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa (AFAWA) program and encourage gender-transformative lending and non-lending operations, said an AfDB press release.

It is the first thematic fund on gender in the history of the Bank Group. The fund will be created for an initial period of 10 years, said the bank.

AFAWA is a flagship pan-African initiative of the Bank which aims to fill the $ 42 billion financing gap facing women in Africa.

Through AFAWA, the Bank is leading a major initiative to unleash women’s entrepreneurial capacity and economic participation for maximum impact on development.

Also on Tuesday, the Bank’s board of directors approved a risk-sharing mechanism which is an innovative financial instrument to reduce the risks to which women-owned businesses are exposed, improve their profile with banks and help them grow and thrive as entrepreneurs, the statement said.

The main investors in GETF are the governments of France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

“It’s been a great day for us as a bank. This is a great day for the continent and for African women because this instrument offers innovative ways to meet the challenges of access to finance for African women entrepreneurs, “said AfDB President Akinwumi Adesina. .

The African Guarantee Fund (AGF) was chosen as the first implementing partner to facilitate access to finance for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) owned by women.

AGF is a pan-African entity that provides financial institutions with guarantees and other financial products to support SMEs in Africa.

It has a network distributed in 42 African countries and more than 150 financial institutions, which AFAWA will operate.

The first transaction is expected to unlock up to $ 2 billion in credit for empowering women’s businesses across the continent.

Vanessa Moungar, Director of the Bank’s Gender, Women and Civil Society Department, described the endorsement as “the biggest effort ever to close the gap in access to finance for women in the history of Africa, ”and said that the resources of the Fund and the risk-sharing mechanism will prioritize women’s economic empowerment and high-impact women’s initiatives.

She said the partnership with AGF is a starting point for mobilizing other financial institutions and increasing access to finance for women entrepreneurs on the continent.

According to the statement, apart from G7 donors and the Netherlands, other countries are showing a keen interest in contributing to the initiative, notably Rwanda and Sweden.

“The Bank Group will continue to mobilize resources to unlock US $ 5 billion in financing for women-owned businesses in Africa. AFAWA is also an implementing partner of the Women Entrepreneurship Finance (We-Fi) initiative, ”said the press release.

END / INFOSPLUSGABON / GFD / GABON2020

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