Rahma Ahmed
By Ahmed Rahma
The Africa Digital Financial Inclusion (ADFI) Facility has approved grants worth $1.3 million for two research efforts to enhance women’s digital access to loans and micro-insurance.
The grants of $1 million and $300,000 will be disbursed through the facility, a blended finance vehicle supported by the African Development Bank Group (AfDB), to two financial technology firms, Pula Advisors Kenya Ltd; and M-KOPA Kenya Ltd.
It was revealed that Pula Advisors, Kenya Ltd will use its share of the grant for research of social, cultural and economic factors that impact women farmers’ access to microinsurance in Kenya, Nigeria and Zambia.
Commenting on the research findings which will inform the design and implementation of gender-centric insurance products and will be undertaken over a 3-year time frame, Sheila Okiro, the Bank’s Coordinator for ADFI, “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.”
The three-year project will have three phases: product development; piloting; and scaling; the outcomes are expected to benefit 360,000 farmers, 50 per cent of them women, as well as boost farm yields by up to 30 per cent. This will also raise incomes and enhance household and national food security.
According to the statement, M-KOPA will use the $300,000 grant funding for research involving 250 women and 250 men in Kenya’s Kisumu, Eldoret and Machakos counties.
The company is expected to 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, approved by the bank on February 9, 2021, is also expected to benefit women with no or limited access to financial services that run small informal businesses.
Once developed, the mobile app will be used to pilot small loans to the women traders, it stated.
Both projects align with ADFI’s digital products and innovation and capacity building intervention pillars as well as its cross-cutting focus on gender inclusion, a thematic running across all its interventions.
The PULA grant approval meets African Development Bank strategic goals, including the 10-year strategy, two High-5 priority areas feed Africa and improve the quality of life for Africans and the financial inclusion strategies of Kenya, Nigeria and Zambia.
While the M-KOPA project is aligned with the Bank’s Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa (AFAWA) program that seeks to increase access to finance for women.
ADFI is a pan-African initiative designed to accelerate digital financial inclusion throughout Africa, with the goal of ensuring that 332 million more Africans, 60 per cent of them women, gain access to the formal economy.
The facility was formally launched in June 2019 at the bank’s annual meetings in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea.
Current ADFI partners are the French Development Agency (AFD); the French Treasury’s Ministry of Economy and Finance; The Government of Luxembourg’s Ministry of Finance; the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; and the African Development Bank, which also hosts the fund.
