The ICR Facility is supporting its partners to increase women’s economic empowerment (WEE) by facilitating their access to finance. Our new ICReport How to make the Business Environment work for Women’s Economic Empowerment builds on an earlier publication Trends in Gender Finance in African Caribbean and Pacific Development Finance Institutions and demonstrates how the recommendations made can be implemented in practice with the ICR Facility. How can short term technical assistance help in kickstarting and implementing change?
The role of Development Finance Institutions
In today’s global landscape, women entrepreneurs still face significant hurdles, including legal barriers, administrative complexities, and societal biases that hinder their progress. Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) are particularly well placed to lead on investing in women and they are increasingly looking to tap into this underserved market.
What are Development Finance Institutions?
Development Finance Institutions are (partially or totally) state-owned financial institutions that aim to support economic development in a country or region. They share four characteristics:
- They enjoy independent legal status and financial autonomy.
- They are controlled or supported by central or local governments.
- They execute a public mandate, addressing market inconsistencies.
- They are not engaged in commercial banking, individual bank accounts or consumer credit.
How is the ICR Facility supporting?
Gender finance and WEE are new areas for many – if not most – national and sub-regional DFIs, and the journey towards serving women effectively is not without challenges. The ICR Facility is working with a selected number of DFIs on the basis of jointly developed workplans which reflect each institution’s priorities and strategic objectives. We also organize knowledge sharing activities to communicate widely about innovative approaches and lessons learnt.
Increase awareness
There is low awareness amongst DFIs about gender finance. According to the ICR Facility’s study, fewer than 20% of African, Caribbean, and Pacific DFIs could provide evidence of active gender policies or programmes. Sharing success stories and case studies highlighting the economic benefits of women’s entrepreneurship from fellow DFIs can help raise awareness and support DFIs in their gender journey.
That is why the ICR Facility has developed a gender-focused training for DFIs as a massive online open course (MOOC) named Developing a Gender Approach in DFIs. In this 2-hour self-paced course, the staff of DFIs can learn how to develop a gender finance approach in their institution. The objective is to provide them with a good overview of the main steps they can take to promote gender mainstreaming, and to equip them with additional resources to continue their gender journey. Modules take 10 to 15 minutes each, totalling about two hours for the entire course. After completing a final test, participants receive a certificate of completion.
“The most interesting part for me was learning step by step on how to develop a gender policy, something that I know is lacking in a lot of DFIs.”
Feedback from a MOOC user
Furthermore, during the ICR4WEE Conference, several sessions focused on gender mainstreaming in financial institutions and how to increase access to finance for women-owned enterprises. The conference was also the occasion to organise a networking event to kick-start discussions between representatives from DFIs, and in parallel, the ICR Facility has created an online DFI Exchange group with quarterly sessions to give banks the opportunity to continue to share experiences and lessons learned.
“As a DFI we have noted how innovative other agencies have been in creating suitable financing products for women entrepreneurs, this has been a great opportunity to learn also of how they have overcome certain complications in their businesses.”
Participant at the ICR4WEE Conference in Kigali
Increase institutional gender strengthening
A good way for a DFI to start its gender journey is by conducting an institutional gender assessment, as it allows them to identify which gender-related gaps, whether client-facing or internal, should be prioritised for improvement. These assessments can bring unsuspected issues to light. For example, the gender assessment conducted in 2023 with the support of the ICR Facility by the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Corporation (SMEDCO) in Zimbabwe revealed that although its financial product, the “Chiedza Khanya Mama”, was meant to be gender-transformative, this was in fact not the case because the name suggested the product was only for mothers instead of addressing all women. Thus, SMEDCO is now working towards changing the name of the product, opening a women’s desk, altering its marketing approach, and increasing the maximum loan amount under this scheme.
Increase capacity to measure and evaluate gender finance
Many DFIs do not yet have gender-responsive monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems or practical tools to determine their baseline and track their progress against goals. The Development Bank of Rwanda (BRD) is the first bank which was supported by the ICR Facility in this area in 2021. They requested technical assistance to develop a framework and implementation procedures for institutional performance tracking as well as an impact assessment tool to efficiently and transparently assess the expected impact of BRD’s lending and on-lending activities prior to a financing decision. After the support was delivered, BRD has constantly refined the tool to make it more effective to the Rwandan context, and has shared their experience of this adjustment process with other banks in a session of the DFI Exchange Group.
“My first action is to conduct an internal briefing webinar with the Private Sector Division of the Bank to share lessons learnt so they can also inform actions and decisions of the relevant teams”.
Participant to the DFI Exchange group session, when asked how they would apply the knowledge learned in the session with BRD
Currently, the ICR Facility provides tailored technical assistance to eleven DFIs in the ACP region, and most interventions include developing gender-responsive monitoring and evaluation. For an overview of our current DFI partner banks, please visit Support to DFIs | ICR Facility (icr-facility.eu).
Refinement of products to become gender-responsive
Once they have defined a strategy and made sure they were able to measure their actions, the next step for a lot of DFIs is to make sure the products they offer are well adapted to women entrepreneurs. The ICR Facility supported the Tanzania Agricultural Development Bank (TADB) to tackle financial exclusion for women and young farmers. This led to the launch of a Gender Scheme of almost 3 million Euro, allowing for wider access to credit to more than 25,000 women in agriculture. TADB has also launched a wholesale lending scheme to work with partner financial institutions to expand its loan portfolio to women. Find out more on the technical study that analyses which agricultural value chains are more relevant for women and youth and leverages the current activities of the bank, as well as other lenders in Tanzania and other DFIs on the African continent.
Technical assistance and knowledge sharing are extremely effective to increase DFIs’ capacity to better serve women and to make the investment climate more inclusive. This is why the ICR Facility is supporting DFIs in every step of the process of gender mainstreaming: from identifying the issues through comprehensive assessments, to setting objectives and activities to reach them, adapting their offer so that women-led enterprises can have a better access to financial products, and making sure the targets are reached and the desired impact is achieved.
This publication is part of an intervention supported by the Investment Climate Reform (ICR) Facility. The ICR Facility is co-funded by the European Union (EU), the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS) under the 11th European Development Fund (EDF), the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the British Council. The ICR Facility is implemented by GIZ, the British Council, Expertise France, and SNV. The contents of this publication are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the donors or the implementing partners
