Designing for Women Segments in Africa- A Lever to Increased Women’s Financial Inclusion

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Fiw Topic

Women's Financial Inclusion

Fiw Year

2024

Transcripts:

English

Spanish

French

Summary + Key Insights

The session focused on enhancing women’s financial inclusion in Africa through innovative product design and partnerships, highlighting successful initiatives in Tanzania and Mozambique.

🌟 Importance of Context: Understanding the unique challenges faced by women in different sectors is crucial for designing effective financial products.

🤝 Collaborative Efforts: Partnerships between financial institutions, organizations, and regulatory bodies strengthen the ecosystem for women’s financial inclusion.

🔍 Use of Data: Evidence-based research and alternative data for credit scoring can help address gender disparities in access to finance.

💻 Digitization Benefits: Digitizing community savings groups enhances security, transparency, and financial literacy among women.

📈 Scalability Potential: Successful initiatives in one region can be replicated in other markets, expanding the reach of financial services to women.

💬 Continuous Feedback: Engaging directly with target users leads to better product designs that meet their actual needs and preferences.

🎯 Intentional Product Design: Designing financial products with women’s specific needs in mind fosters economic empowerment and reduces the gender financing gap.

This session summary was AI-generated using NoteGPT.

Although there has been notable advancement in financial inclusion, African women continue to encounter obstacles when attempting to obtain formal financial services. These challenges include a lack of financial products tailored specifically for women, obstacles in obtaining credit, insufficient financial education, and restrictive cultural and societal norms. Designing financial services for women segments is not only a matter of social justice but also a strategic economic move that can lead to widespread benefits for individuals, communities, and the broader economy.

To tackle the issue of financial products not being tailored to the specific needs of different groups of women, the FSD Network, FSD Mozambique and FSD Tanzania are collaborating to test women-centred product design with a number of FSPs. In Mozambique, they are collaborating to develop the Gender Smart Innovation Facility, which supports the capabilities of financial service providers in the Mozambican market to better understand and meet the specific needs of the women segments they serve or intend to serve. The programme includes a policy component with the regulatory agencies mandated to enhance women’s financial inclusion in Mozambique. The FSD Network and FSD Tanzania are working with MNO Tigo Tanzania to develop a financial product for savings groups.

The session will explore these practical examples of how a range of FSPs are being supported to design for women segments – highlighting the importance of designing customized financial solutions for women as well as the role of regulatory authorities in the actualization of women’s financial inclusion in Africa.

Session Speakers

Tolulope Babajide

Gender Network Manager, FSD Africa

Tolulope Babajide is a driven development professional with experience in women’s economic empowerment, financial inclusion, rural and agricultural livelihoods and strategic partnerships. She has extensive experience developing partnerships for social impact rooted in core business practices; identifying barriers to financial service uptake, particularly among women, and developing solutions to address those barriers. Tolulope is the Gender Network Manager at FSD Africa. She works on the FSD Network Gender Collaborative Programme, working across all the Financial Sector Deepening Organisations in Africa, mainstreaming gender in their programmes and ensuring that there is increased participation of women in the access and usage of financial services and products. She worked at Sahel Consulting Agriculture and Nutrition Ltd as the Financial Inclusion and Gender Manager, where she led the financial inclusion component of the Advancing Local Dairy Development in Nigeria (ALDDN) program, which focuses on developing context-specific innovative financial products to improve the livelihoods of female dairy farmers. She previously served as the Partnerships and Innovations Advisor for the World Bank-funded Nigeria for Women Project. Tolulope holds a bachelor’s degree in English and Literary Studies and an MBA from Nexford University. She is skilled at public speaking and writing on topical issues such as gender and development, women’s economic empowerment, and forming strategic partnerships to achieve impact. She had the honour of moderating Ecobank’s launch of its gender banking service, ‘Ellevate’, and she writes a guest column for BusinessDay and Inclusion Times. Tolulope volunteers as a mentor to young women in development and is a Philanthropy Circuit Executive Committee member. She also serves as the Board Chair of ‘A Girl Project.’

Anabela Mabota

Knowledge, Monitoring & Learning Manager, FSD Mozambique

Anabela Mabota is an agricultural economic development professional with expertise in monitoring result measurement, financial inclusion, and learning. She brings more than 20 years of experience in agriculture sector more specifically on agricultural market information system implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development in Mozambique. She worked at Abt Associate under the AgriFUTURO a USAID funded program as an M&E lead, where she provided strategic partnerships on agribusiness and trade program. Currently, she leads the Knowledge, Monitoring and Learning unit within the Financial Sector Deepening Moçambique, providing leadership in results management, knowledge management & learning, action research, project management, and communications. More specifically ensuring setup and implementation of monitoring and results measurements (MRM) systems. Anabela holds a Master of Science in Agriculture Economics from The Ohio State University in the USA. She holds the FSDAfrica Academy Certificate. Also, she is certified by The Fletcher School Leadership Program for Financial Inclusion Online Eight Question Method for Policy Development Training in October 2021. As part of the FSD Academy she participated in the training on Impact-Oriented Measurement and in Professional Writing. Actively she participates in the FSD Network MRM Working Group, chairing it during 2018/2019. She is the President of the General Assembly of the FSDMoç Cooperative.

Lillian Okafor

CEO, Thembani Africa Group

Lilian Okafor is currently the Executive Director of Thembani Africa Group (a financial technology company). She is an experienced banker, financial and business advisor. She has MBA from University of South Wales, UK. A Dip in Financial Management from International Business Management Institute, Berlin, Germany. She is a Certified Management Consultant (CMC) from IMC-Nigeria and a Certified Management Specialist (CMS) with Distinction in Time Management from London Graduate School. Lilian has structured deals and/or worked in different African countries like Nigeria, Ghana, Mozambique, Malawi, South Africa, Swaziland and Zambia. She is passionate about Access to Finance and Financial Literacy Training for SMEs especially women and youth entrepreneurs.

Sakyi Opoku

Head of Remittances, Pricing, Analytics, Marketing and Zonal Operations, TigoPesa

Sakyi currently holds a Senior Commercial role at Tigo Pesa in Tanzania. He is a seasoned telecom and digital finance professional focusing on Commercial Operations and Business Turnarounds. An expert in Marketing , Product Development, Sales and Distribution, Research, Partnership Management among others for over 15 years. He has served in various senior commercial roles and delivered strong performance and stakeholder value on commercial assignments in various multinationals, in some African Countries such as Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda, South Africa, and Tanzania. He has contributed to setting up organizations, setting up the commercial operations, managing research projects, designing and running various consumer campaigns to boost customer acquisition, sales, market share and profitability of various organizations within the Telecom, Mobile Money and FMCG space. In the area of solutions development, he has led various teams to develop and launch myriad solutions including special Wakala (Agent) Package to attract women in Zanziber to become Mobile Money agents and most recently contributing to the design and development of Tigo Pesa Kikoba, a digital product for savings and loans groups in Tanzania whose members are predominantly women.

Happy Sollo

Lead Digital Financial Services & Infrastructure Development, FSD Network

Happy Sollo is a seasoned professional in Digital Financial Services, with expertise in technology, project management, corporate strategy, and product development. Her mission focuses on leading initiatives that leverage technology to enhance financial access for underserved populations. Currently, she leads the Digital Financial Services and Infrastructure Development portfolio at Financial Sector Deepening (FSD) Tanzania. In this capacity, among other initiatives she implements innovative strategies to design products tailored to the needs of women, while also supporting financial service providers in deploying these solutions. Notably, she has recently spearheaded the digitization of community microfinance groups, predominantly composed of women. With over a decade of experience across both public and private sectors, Happy has built a robust background in banking, management consulting, and development, with a particular emphasis on financial inclusion.

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