cat/womens-entrepreneurship-finance
Maya Margie Younes is the Head of Marketing at BLC Bank with 20 years’ experience in the banking sector. Before moving her focus to BLC, she had spent several years at American Express Bank, involved in various roles such as business development, strategy and risk management. She played a pivotal role in the strategy and implementation of the Women’s Empowerment program encompassed by the We Initiative focused on gender equality at BLC.
IFC and Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women announced a syndicate
Sona Gandhi began her microfinance work in India and Malawi, and has been with SME Finance Forum member FINCA since 2005, assuming leadership positions in the U.S. and Jordan. Since 2015, Gandhi has served as the CEO of FINCA Guatemala. Under her inspired leadership, FINCA says it has introduced innovative health and life insurance products now benefiting 30,000 Guatemalans.
In 1988, Rezani Aziz joined the Women’s Chamber of Industry and Commerce in Sri Lanka to network with other business women. Today, she’s now the founder of the Federation of Women Entrepreneur Associations in Sri Lanka (FWEASL) and CEO of Adfactors PR. In this Democracy that Delivers’s podcast, Aziz shares the changes she’s witnessed and helped foster for women entrepreneurs from 1988 to today.
This report summarizes the discussions held in the context of the Roundtable on Digital Financial Inclusion in Africa during the 2017 EIB Africa Day, which was co-organized in Berlin on July 6, 2017 by the EIB, Afrika-Verein der Deutschen Wirtschaft and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. It aims at providing an interim thematic update in between two editions of the EIB’s Study of Banking Sectors in sub-Saharan Africa.
Highlighting the stories of three successful women entrepreneurs, “Taking Women-owned Businesses to the Next Level” focused on the barriers women face when trying to build and expand their businesses.
The session featured Nour Al-Hassan, who transformed her translation business from two employees to more than 200; Win Win Tint, who expanded her family’s single supermarket into a leading modern retail company; and Anta Bathily, who worked her way up from the bottom of her father’s poultry business to lead the company’s efforts to diversify into other agribusiness enterprises.
In 2014, the EBRD made an ambitious commitment to promote women’s entrepreneurship in Turkey, pledging €300 million in dedicated credit lines to local banks for on-lending to companies run by women.
Through their extensive branch networks, loans averaging €15,000 were provided to 14,400 companies in 79 out of 81 Turkish provinces. Two-thirds of the financing provided to date has been channelled to firms outside the large metropolitan areas of Istanbul, Izmir and Ankara. The EU and the Turkish government have joined the effort, with €38 million in grant funding.
Innovate Finance, the membership organization that represents the UK’s global FinTech community, published its 2017 Women FinTech Powerlist. The initiative is a celebration of the achievements and talent of women across the FinTech ecosystem as they continue to play a crucial role in the innovation and evolution of financial services.
Henriette Kolb, Head, Gender Secretariat, for the International Finance Corporation, authors a post in response to The World Economic Forum’s 2017 Global Gender Gap Report. The report analyzes disparities in health, education, economy, and politics — found that the overall average gender gap rose to 32%, up from 31.7% in 2016. Kolb says that one part of the solution is to improve women’s access to finance.
Kristalina Georgieva is the chief executive officer of the World Bank. A Bulgarian national, she previously helped shape the agenda of the European Union, first as Commissioner for International Cooperation, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response from 2010. In a special to The Yomiuri Shimbun, Georgieva shares the importance of women-owned businesses to ending poverty.
