Coca-Cola’s 5by20 humanitarian programme has empowered more than two million women in Africa, the company disclosed in A Decade of Achievement report.

Launched in 2010, 5by20 assists women entrepreneurs across the Coca-Cola value chain – agricultural producers, suppliers, distributors, retailers, recyclers, and artisans – overcome challenges when establishing and growing their businesses.

Africa, Development Diaries understands, has a gender-inclusion gap of 11 percent as compared to the global average of nine percent, according to the 2017 Findex Report.

The programme provides access to business skills, financial services, assets and support networks of peers and mentors.

Women entrepreneurs are enabled to overcome social and economic barriers and succeed as entrepreneurs, while also helping create sustainable communities.

The company, in the report, said it worked with several partners to implement over 300 programmes in 100 countries to provide women entrepreneurs with business skills training.

In 2012, the company signed a global agreement with UN Women to enable the economic empowerment of women entrepreneurs in three pilot countries, which included South Africa.

At the end of the four-year partnership in South Africa in December 2016, over 25,000 women micro-entrepreneurs had received business skills, leadership training, mentoring and peer networking skills, and access to finance.

In Nigeria, in partnership with the UK Department for International Development Girls Education, the company said it launched the Educating Nigerian Girls in Nigeria Enterprise (ENGINE) value programme.

According to Coca-Cola, nearly 13,000 young girls and women benefitted from the ENGINE programme, which was designed to strengthen the educational and economic opportunities of the Nigerian girl-child.

Similarly, in 2020, nearly 800,000 Kenyan women were empowered through the Women Enterprise Fund (WEF).

‘Women entrepreneurs continue to face major hurdles hindering their successes, and we acknowledge that our work must therefore continue, particularly given the significant socio-economic disruption created by the pandemic in so many communities around the world’, President, Public Affairs, Communication, and Sustainability at Coca-Cola Africa, Patricia Obozuwa, said.

‘By investing in women’s economic empowerment over the past decade, we have created shared value in hopes of a better shared future – enabling improved livelihoods for women, their families and their communities, while inclusively expanding our business.

‘We are proud about the ripple effects that these programmes have had on the millions of lives we have touched and will continue to have over the years to come’.

Source: Coca-Cola Company

Photo source: UN Women