Visa is Set to Help African Women Fund Managers Scale Their Businesses

The African Women Impact Fund (AWIF), a partnership between Standard Bank and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, has been awarded funding by Visa as of today (UNECA).

The award will be used to meet the working capital requirements of 55 women who responded to AWIF’s call to action and have been a part of their program since 2020 throughout South, East, and West Africa.

The financing from Visa will go toward initiatives that help business owners develop their technical expertise, make themselves more attractive to larger institutional investors, and manage profitable enterprises that will go on to invest in other companies, including small and medium-sized ones.

“The money will make sure that these business owners can concentrate on expanding their companies without having to worry about handling short-term debt and other operational expenditures associated with developing a successful firm,” says the statement. the head of Sub-Saharan Africa at Visa, Aida Diarra, senior vice president, said.

The three areas covered by the award to AWIF are as follows:

• Portfolio management capability: portfolio structuring, risk management and administration.
• Investment research capability: identifying investment opportunities, due diligence, mandate alignment, and continuous investment and operations monitoring and,
• Operational support: Operational and back-office support, human resourcing, systems implementation, and vendor management

The She’s Next program, a global advocacy program for women-owned businesses that has been expanded to Sub-Saharan Africa in order to further champion and strengthen African women business owners as they build, sustain, and advance their businesses, is being continued through Visa’s grant to the AWIF.

Building sustainable businesses continue to present several difficulties for African women fund managers.

Due to institutional impediments and investor bias, research indicates that progress in increasing the visibility and involvement of women fund managers is going slowly. Women only make up 7.6% of private equity in Africa, while women-owned businesses only receive 7% of PE and VC in emerging markets. This shows the possibilities for closing the gender gap that is currently present.

Less than 1.3 percent of the $69.1 trillion in global financial assets are handled by women and people of color, which further reflects this.

“She’s Next’s mission is to support the growth of women-owned businesses, and our goal with this award is to provide access in a market where these businesses are underrepresented. We want to make sure that women are not only recipients of institutional investment for enterprises but also decision-makers through this program, said Diarra.

“We are thrilled that Standard Bank and Visa have partnered, and we are appreciative for their significant gift to the African Women Impact Fund. Gender equality is seen by Standard Bank as both a fundamental human right and a commercial necessity. The Standard Bank Group’s Lindeka Dzedze, Head of Strategic Partnerships, summarizes that the group “believes that the economic empowerment of women is essential to raising Africa’s economic output and creating sustainable jobs, especially within the small enterprises that drive growth on the continent.