The African Development Bank (AfDB) has approved two grants worth $1.3 million for research aimed at increasing women’s access to a range of digital financial services in Africa.
AfDB said in a statement on 2021 International Women’s Day (IWD) that the grants will be disbursed by Africa Digital Financial Inclusion (ADFI) facility.
ADFI is a pan-African instrument designed to accelerate digital financial inclusion throughout Africa, with the goal of ensuring that an additional 332 million Africans have access to the formal financial system.
Africa has a gender-inclusion gap of 11 percent as compared to the global average of nine percent, according to the 2017 Findex Report.
Also, records show that West Africa has the highest gender disparity in Africa as reflected in the region’s Gender Development Index of 0.825 versus the African average of 0.871.
Development Diaries understands that the aforementioned grants will be disbursed to two fintech firms – Pula Advisors Kenya and M-KOPA Kenya.
The multilateral finance bank said Pula Advisors will use one million dollars for research of social and economic factors that impact women farmers’ access to microinsurance in Kenya, Nigeria and Zambia.
M-KOPA, on the other hand, will use $300,000 funding for research involving 250 women and 250 men in Kenya’s Kisumu, Eldoret and Machakos counties.
AfDB said research findings will inform the design and implementation of gender-centric insurance products and the project will be undertaken over a three-year period.
‘This grant funding will be used to leverage technology to develop innovative and responsive loan and insurance products that can spur productivity and inclusion, especially for our women smallholder farmers and traders’, AfDB Coordinator for ADFI, Sheila Okiro, said in the statement.
The three-year project will have three phases: product development, piloting, and scaling, and the outcomes, according to the bank, are expected to benefit 360,000 farmers.
AfDB said M-KOPA will assess the barriers to and opportunities for women’s access to digital financial services and financial literacy programmes via smartphone, and use the research insights to design a financial services app that is relevant to small-scale women traders.
The project, which was approved by the bank on 9 February, 2021, will benefit women with no or limited access to financial services that run small informal businesses.
Source: AfDB
Photo source: UN Women
