We-Fi Regional Summit calls for urgent public and private sector action to support women entrepreneurs in West Africa

Heads of state, ministers, leaders of multilateral development banks, private sector executives, women entrepreneurs, and contributing governments of the Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi) convened at the first We-Fi Regional Summit to discuss concrete ways to strengthen support for women-led small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in West Africa.

Attended by more than 400 public and private sector leaders from West Africa and other regions, the Summit was organized by We-Fi in collaboration with the African Development Bank, the Islamic Development Bank, and the World Bank Group. It was hosted by the government of the Republic of Côte d’Ivoire.

The Summit concluded with a joint Call to Action, urging wide-ranging public policy reforms and private sector actions to help women entrepreneurs overcome persistent barriers, both financial and non-financial.

A recent World Bank study found that monthly profits and sales from female-owned firms in the region were on average 34 percent and 38 percent lower, respectively than those of male-owned firms.

Summit leaders called on governments to undertake policy and legal reforms to increase women entrepreneurs’ access to financial services, government contracts, and the basic infrastructure of the digital economy. They also highlighted the urgent need to remove labor and mobility restrictions for women and to ensure their equal rights to the property.

Acknowledging the importance of public and private sector collaboration, Summit leaders underscored the vital role that private sector and civil society organizations play in improving women’s access to capital, markets, digital skills training, mentorship, and business networks. In addition, they called for better collection and reporting of sex-disaggregated data by both the public and private sectors to help measure the impact of policy reforms on women entrepreneurs.

The Summit is the first of its kind for We-Fi, a global partnership among 14 donor governments, eight multilateral development banks, and other public and private sector stakeholders, established in October 2017 and housed in the World Bank Group. Donor governments have so far committed over US $350 million to support We-Fi’s activities.

“Supporting women entrepreneurs requires comprehensive solutions that focus on innovation, value chains, and use of Islamic finance. We should consider women entrepreneurs to be partners of development financial institutions rather than recipients of financing. Our role can thus be to incubate and empower their businesses, not just to provide financing,” said Islamic Development Bank Group President Bandar M. H. Hajjar.

In April 2018, the World Bank Group and the Islamic Development Bank were among the recipients of We-Fi’s first round of funding to support women-owned and led SMEs, many of which are in Africa. The first allocation of $120 million is expected to mobilize over $1.6 billion in additional funds from the private sector, donors, governments, and other development partners.

Original source: IsDB
Published on 19 April 2019