The African Development Bank (AfDB) has approved two grants for research that will increase African women’s access to digital financial services. These include loans and micro-insurance.

The grants, for $1 million and $300,000 respectively, will be disbursed through the Africa Digital Financial Inclusion Facility (ADFI). The Bank supports this blended finance vehicle to two financial technology firms. These firms are Pula Advisors Kenya Ltd. and M-KOPA Kenya Ltd.

Pula Advisors Kenya Ltd

Specifically, Pula Advisors will use the $1 million for research of social, cultural, and economic factors. These are factors that will impact women farmers’ access to microinsurance in Kenya, Nigeria, and Zambia.

Ideally, Research findings will inform the design and implementation of gender-centric insurance products. The project will over a 3-year time frame.

“This grant funding will be used to leverage technology to develop innovative and responsive loans. And insurance products that can spur productivity and inclusion, especially for our women smallholder farmers and traders”.
Sheila Okiro, the Bank’s Coordinator for ADFI.

The three-year project will have three phases: product development; piloting; and scaling. Meanwhile, 360,000 farmers will benefit from the outcome of the project, 50% of which are women. It will also boost farm yields by up to 30%. This will also raise incomes and enhance household and national food security.

M-KOPA Kenya Ltd

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 will assess the barriers to and opportunities for women’s access to digital financial services. Also, it will aid financial literacy programs via smartphones. It will then use the research insights to design a financial services app that is relevant to small-scale women traders.

The project will benefit women with no or limited access to financial services that run small informal businesses. The mobile app will help pilot small loans to women traders.

Both projects align with ADFI’s digital products and innovation and capacity-building intervention pillars. They also aligned with its cross-cutting focus on gender inclusion, a thematic running across all its interventions.

The PULA grant approval meets African Development Bank’s strategic goals such as the Ten-Year Strategy. It also meets the two High-5 priority areas—feeds Africa and improve the quality of life for Africans, and the financial inclusion strategies of Kenya, Nigeria, and Zambia.

On the other hand, the M-KOPA project is aligned with the Bank’s Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa (AFAWA) program. The AFAWA seeks to increase access to finance for women.

About the ADFI

ADFI is a Pan-African initiative designed to accelerate digital financial inclusion throughout Africa. The goal is to ensure that 332 million more Africans, 60% 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.

Currently, the ADFI partners with the French Development Agency (AFD); and the French Treasury’s Ministry of Economy and Finance. The other partners include The Government of Luxembourg’s Ministry of Finance; and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This also includes the African Development Bank, which also hosts the fund.