An approach likely to accelerate the economic and social development of the continent.
The African Development Bank has just awarded a grant of $320,535 to the West African Monetary Agency. This sum is intended to promote the integration of gender in the basic regulatory frameworks governing digital financial services of ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States).
The grant will be used to conduct a gender gap analysis that is featured in several West African Monetary Agency strategies. Including those relating to financial inclusion, gender-disaggregated data analysis, digital payment services and infrastructure, and digital identity. The project will be implemented over three years; it will potentially affect up to 350 million people in the fifteen ECOWAS member countries.
The project aims to increase the participation of women to 35% in the operations of the region’s digital financial market, which has a greater gender disparity than in other parts of the continent. Indeed, according to the 2017 Global Findex report, the gender mainstreaming gap is 11% in Africa compared to the global average of 9%. To meet this challenge, “it is imperative that gender is integrated into all functions, but more at the level of policies and regulations”, explains the AfDB.
Costly equality!
This initiative is in line with the AfDB’s Ten-Year Strategy, “The Gender Strategy (2021-2025)”. The Bank plans to spend up to $5 billion on this over the next few years.
Its analysis of key sectors shows that women and girls face several constraints that prevent them from actively participating in and fully benefiting from Africa’s potential and its growth. Gender inequality in the labor market costs sub-Saharan Africa nearly $100 billion a year. Data that demonstrates the under-exploitation of the continent’s growth potential.
In agriculture, for example, small farms run by women face a productivity gap of 20% to 30% compared to their male counterparts. Closing the gender gap in food and agriculture could have a huge impact on development, including increasing agricultural production by up to 19%, boosting agricultural and aggregate GDP and pulling out millions people of poverty.
On the continent, women-owned businesses record monthly profits that are on average 38% lower than those of male-owned businesses. In addition, women’s access to digital technology remains limited.
The AfDB promotes gender equality!
For its part, the AfDB considers “to have made significant progress in promoting gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls over time.” The gender dimension is taken more into account in its strategic documents, in its project support and in its research work.
Likewise, the Bank invests in special initiatives to support gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, particularly in terms of access to finance through the affirmative action initiative for financing for women. women in Africa (AFAWA).
Three strategic pillars!
The Bank wants to play a catalytic role in accelerating efforts to address gender inequalities and foster more inclusive economic transformation for women, in multiple ways. In addition, the Bank has the stature and prestige to defend and promote equality.
The Gender Strategy is based on three pillars that support the Bank’s priorities aimed at promoting gender equality, empowering women and girls and accelerating economic and social development.
First, the empowerment of women through access to finance and markets. This pillar focuses on improving access to finance and technical assistance to women-run SMEs in order to transform them into productive and competitive enterprises.
The Bank is committed to increasing the confidence of African financial institutions in financing and technical assistance to women-led SMEs. Supporting women SMEs with technical assistance in areas such as business model development, financial and business planning reduces their risk profile. The bank will also support regional member countries to establish a business environment conducive to the development of the activities of women entrepreneurs.
Secondly, it is about accelerating professional integration and job creation for women, by strengthening skills. This pillar focuses on improving women’s access to skills and decent jobs. It recognizes the need to educate more women in science, while leveraging technology to improve access to skills and information.
Finally, the third pillar relates to improving women’s access to social services, thanks to infrastructure. The Bank aims to influence the development of quality infrastructure, taking into account the gender dimension, in order to guarantee women adequate access to these infrastructures as stakeholders.
For all these promises, the AfDB intends to monitor and publish various indicators to measure the progress made in Africa in terms of gender equality, the impact of operations and internal operational efficiency.
