Women activists explore ways to scale up financial empowerment

Gender activists met in Kigali Tuesday to discuss new ideas for scaling up women financial empowerment during a global women summit.

The activists saw lack of access to finance as a challenge to women economic empowerment, voicing hopes that banks can ease access to finances to fund women entrepreneurship projects.

The one-day summit was held under the theme of "Towards Vision 2020: Women Leading Innovative Transformation."

About 350 women from across the world attended the summit hosted by KORA Associates, New Faces New Voices Rwanda Chapter, and IFC World Bank Group.

"More women in Africa are more into informal sector and agriculture enterprising. For such a sector to thrive, financial institutions need to seize the opportunity by offering affordable credits," said Monique Nsazabaganwa, the chairperson of 'New Faces New Voices' Rwanda Chapter.

Oda Gasinzigwa, Rwanda's minister of Gender and Family Promotion, said that lack of collateral constraints women entrepreneurs' access to credit facilities.

"We need to analyze statistics to see the challenges in business projects being presented to the banks, the procedures, bureaucracy within our financial sector. These are some of the challenges, and we need to make sure that the numbers tally with big projects which can help women become economically empowered," said Gasinzigwa.

The minister noted that in Rwanda, 86 percent of farmers are women and there is need to support women in terms of processing and general value chain.

She outlined capacity building and access to affordable credits among the areas which need to be addressed to ensure women's fully participation in innovative transformation.

Banks have been reluctant to offer credit facilities to women entrepreneurs due to inadequacies in their business proposals. Endit