The World Bank Group announced two new initiatives to improve access to start-up financing and e-commerce markets for women entrepreneurs, at the Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi) Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Summit.
“Starting and growing a business is one of the most powerful tools for women to overcome poverty and build better lives for themselves, their families, and their communities,” said David Malpass, World Bank Group President. “Removing regulatory barriers along with obstacles to access to finance and markets can give women-led businesses the opportunity to succeed.”
We-Fi, housed at the World Bank, has so far allocated close to US$250 million to tackle challenges women entrepreneurs face in developing countries. The allocations aim to reach 114,000 women entrepreneurs. We-Fi is a powerful catalyst for additional investment, helping mobilize more than US$2.6 billion in additional public and private sector funds.
At the We-Fi MENA Regional Summit, held during the Global Women’s Forum Dubai 2020, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and We-Fi launched the ScaleX program to incentivize accelerators to support start-up businesses led by women. IFC research shows that women entrepreneurs in emerging markets face a daunting gender finance gap with only 11% of enterprises that actually attain seed funding being female-led. New research shows that despite women leading half the start-ups that participate in accelerators—entities designed to train and support the development of start-ups to become investment ready—they continue to face greatly unequal access to capital.
The program will incentivize emerging markets accelerators to work with women-led businesses by providing performance-based payments of US$25,000 for every woman entrepreneur that raises US$1 million from investors in start-up funding.
The World Bank and UPS also announced a new partnership to help women entrepreneurs in the Middle East and North Africa region to grow their businesses by assisting them in successfully leveraging e-commerce platforms.
The World Bank and IFC We-Fi programs (US$75 million in allocations) are working with private and public partners in 24 countries via 27 investment and advisory projects to enable women entrepreneurs to access finance and markets and amplify those efforts with global research, partnerships, and policy advocacy.
Original source: World Bank
Published on 16 February 2020
