DIGITAL payments facilitator Visa has announced a grant towards the African Women Impact Fund (AWIF), a collaboration between Standard Bank and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (Uneca), this week.
The grant would be used to fund the working capital needs of women fund managers across South, East, and West Africa and will target 55 women who responded to AWIF’s call to action and have been part of their programme since 2020.
Visa’s grant to the AWIF is an extension of the She’s Next programme, a global advocacy programme for women-owned businesses that have been expanded to Sub-Saharan Africa to further champion and strengthen African women business owners as they build, sustain, and advance their businesses.
Women fund managers in Africa are said to continue to face numerous challenges in building sustainable businesses. Research showed slow-moving progress in the visibility and inclusion of women fund managers due to systematic barriers and investor bias.
With African women accounting for just 7.6 percent of private equity and women-led businesses receiving only 7 percent of Private Equity and Venture Capital in emerging markets, this highlights the opportunities that exist to reduce the current gender gaps.
This was further reflected in the less than 1.3 percent of the $69.1 trillion (R1146 trl) global financial assets that were managed by women and people of colour.
Aida Diarra, the senior vice-president and head of Sub-Saharan Africa at Visa, said the aim of She’s Next was to help women-owned businesses thrive, and their ambition with this grant was to enable access in a space where women-owned firms were under-represented.
“Through this programme, we aim to ensure that women are not only recipients but become decision-makers where institutional funding for businesses is concerned,” Diarra said.
Visa’s funding would be directed towards activities that would assist the business owners with improving their technical skillsets, becoming investible to larger institutional investors, and to run profitable businesses that would, in turn, invest in others, including small and medium businesses.
“The funding will ensure that these business owners are able to focus on growing their enterprises without the burden of managing short-term debt and other operational costs related to building a successful business,” added Diarra.
The grant to AWIF would address three areas of Portfolio management capability: portfolio structuring, risk management and administration, Investment research capability: identifying investment opportunities, due diligence, mandate alignment, and continuous investment and operations monitoring and operational support: Operational and back-office support, human resourcing, systems implementation and vendor management.
Lindeka Dzedze, the Global Markets head, Strategic Partnerships at Standard Bank, said they were elated to have Visa partner with Standard Bank and were grateful for their meaningful contribution to the African Women Impact Fund. “Standard Bank sees gender equity not only as a fundamental human right but also as a business imperative. The group believes that the economic empowerment of women is essential to raising Africa’s economic output and creating sustainable jobs, especially within the small enterprises that drive growth on the continent,” Dzedze said.
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