Institutional gender mainstreaming and strengthening of gender-lens investing activities in Mozambique

Context

Mozambique was placed 82.5 out of 100 in the World Bank Women Business and the Law Index which is higher than the regional average of 71.5. This has however not translated to more women owning or part owning businesses, nor has it translated to women gaining more access to credit or business development services. Gapi operates throughout the Mozambican territory and has implemented several projects focused on women’s economic empowerment and aims to increase its footprint and impact in Mozambique. Gapi promotes national entrepreneurship and financial inclusion through financing, business consulting and training and through participating in the development of companies and institutions. Gapi also wants to increasingly contribute to policy dialogue and reformulation, especially within the financial sector, to allow for differentiated financial products to be created and rolled out through Gapi as well as other financial institutions to increase access to financial products for women.

Objective

The ICR Facility is providing tailor-made technical assistance to Gapi to strengthen its internal gender operations and client-facing gender-lens investing activities, ultimately to better serve women-led MSMEs with improved access to finance.

This intervention comprises the following areas of support:

Institutional gender mainstreaming. Gapi will capture its current institutional progress with regards to gender, including both internal aspects, for example HR, and client-facing measures, for example the design of products and services. Gapi will establish a plan to tackle the existing gaps.

Amending the M&E framework to become gender responsive. Capturing, reporting and evaluating impactful data is a vital step in being able to better tailor services to reach more women as clients. Gapi will transform its current M&E framework to better incorporate crucial data, set key performance indicators, redesign standard operating procedures and develop an impact assessment tool.

Refinement of (non-)financial services to suit the needs of women. Gapi will conduct market research on the needs of (prospective) female clients and determine a strategy to make the products better accessible and include non-financial services as standard offer provided to female clients.

Expected Results

Upon completion of this intervention, Gapi will have:

Conducted an institutional gender assessment

Developed a gender policy, gender strategy, and action plan

Amended the existing M&E framework to become gender-responsive

Equipped staff members with capacity building on the revised M&E system

Refined the financial service offer to suit the needs of women and have included non-financial services