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

Context

Namibia has a relatively high proportion of financially included women compared to its peers in the region. Nevertheless, women and women-led businesses still face constraints to accessing formal financing, partially due to collateral requirement and financial literacy.

The Environmental Investment Fund of Namibia (EIF) has requested support from the ICR Facility to review and improve how the institution is currently serving women. This support will align with and contribute to national strategies on gender and financial inclusion in Namibia.

Objective

The ICR Facility is providing tailor-made technical assistance to EIF to strenghten its internal gender operations and client-facing gender-lens investing activities, to ultimately better promote gender equitable development that protect and main the natural and environmental resources of the country.

This intervention comprises three main areas of support:

Institutional gender mainstreaming. EIF 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. EIF will establish a plan to tackle the existing gaps.
Amending the Monitoring and Evaluation (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. EIF will transform its current M&E framework to better incorporate crucial data, set key performance indicators, redesign standard operating procedures, amongst others.
Refinement of non-financial services to suit the needs of women. EIF will determine a strategy to integrate gender aspects to achieve equal participation of male and female clients through non-financial services.

Results

Upon completion of this intervention, EIF 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
Refined non-financial services to suit the needs of women