The AfDB (African Development Bank) has approved two grants amounting to $1.3 million to Pula Advisors Kenya Ltd and M-KOPA Kenya Ltd; both financial technology firms. The funding seeks to empower research, which will increase African women’s access to a range of digital financial services, including loans and micro-insurance.
The grants, $1 million for Pula and $300,000 for M-KOPA, will be disbursed through the Africa Digital Financial Inclusion Facility (ADFI), a blended finance vehicle supported by AfDB.
Pula will use the $1 million to research social, cultural and economic factors that impact women farmers’ access to micro-insurance in Nigeria, Kenya, and Zambia. These research findings will, in turn, inform the design and implementation of gender-centric insurance products.
The project will be undertaken over three years, split into three phases: product development, piloting, and scaling. The outcomes are expected to not only benefit 360,000 farmers, 50% of them being women, but also boost farm yields by up to 30%. This will also raise incomes and enhance both household and national food security.
The Pula grant approval meets AfDB’s strategic goals, which includes the Ten-Year Strategy, two High-5 priority areas; feed Africa and improve the quality of life for Africans— and the financial inclusion strategies of Kenya, Nigeria and Zambia.
On the other hand, M-KOPA will use the $300,000 grant funding for research that involves 250 women and 250 men in Eldoret, Kisumu and Machakos counties. The company will assess the barriers to opportunities for women’s access to digital financial services and financial literacy programmes via smartphone. After that, use the research insights to design a financial services app that is relevant to small-scale women traders. The project will benefit women without or with limited access to financial services that run small informal businesses. Once developed, the app will be used to pilot small loans to women traders.
The M-KOPA project is aligned with the Bank’s Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa (AFAWA) program to increase access to finance for women.
This grant funding will be used to leverage technology to develop innovative and responsive loan and insurance products that can spur productivity and inclusion, especially for our women smallholder farmers and traders.
Sheila Okiro, AfDB’s Coordinator for ADF
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