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 Wednesday April 17 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.
“Women constitute the majority of Africa’s self-employed population and play a key economic role, with significant benefits for their families, communities, and countries,” Summit leaders note in the joint statement. Acknowledging the challenge of full economic participation, they stress that “Women entrepreneurs also face other barriers that prevent them from accessing finance, markets, technology, mentoring, and capacity-building support. This limits the potential of women entrepreneurs and impedes economic growth and poverty reduction across Africa.”
Due to these constraints, female entrepreneurs in the region consistently lag men on several key indicators of business performance. 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 property.
In the past decade, African governments have improved women’s economic inclusion by implementing 71 legal and regulatory reforms—more than any other regions in the world, according to a World Bank report. While African countries have made significant progress in closing the gender gaps, further strengthening women’s roles as entrepreneurs will transform the continent.
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.
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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.
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.-Press release
