By Iddi Yire
Accra, Mar 08, GNA – On International Women’s Day (IWD) 2025, the African Development Bank Group(AfDB) has lauded women’s role as drivers of regional integration in Africa.
Dr Joy Kategekwa, Director of the African Development Bank Group’s Regional Integration Coordination Office, in a video message to mark the Day said there was no regional integration without stepping up action in support for women in trade in Africa; adding that “today we stand tall – proud of progress made but aware much more needed to be done”.
“Women come to the cross-border trade marketplace with a unique set, they face a unique set of challenges and if you start from the side of their access to productive resources, land for example, that is an issue in several jurisdictions, the ability of women to own land, certainly at the scale that can engage in large-scale productive ventures,” she stated.
“When you look at financing for example, there are practices, norms, perceptions that make it difficult for women to access financing, even if we know and studies confirm that women pay their debts very consistently.”
Dr Kategekwa said when one looks at the cross-border point, citing the border posts, women face unique challenges in these processes, whether it is about the fees and charges they are having to pay, whether it is about the rules and regulations changing arbitrarily.
“But let’s also talk about market information, what are the opportunities assured, how can women utilize them, what about the incentives within these countries that can allow for women to engage in production at the type of scale that would allow them to engage in cross-border trade? She asked.
Dr Kategekwa said all of these were important issues that women face as they engage in cross-border trade.
Framing her response in two ways, she said the first one was that financial institutions must have a consciousness in the way in which their business was done that ensures that it speaks specifically to the priorities of women.
She reiterated that this was a foundational question, which essentially means that all of the programmes and businesses of these financial institutions must have a gender lens.
She noted that the African Development Bank Group is leading the way with the gender marker that ensures that the investments and projects that the Bank engages in were sensitive to women. These over would show impact and increase in the gender dividend through the investments, she added.
Touching on the second question, Dr Joy Kategekwa said one would also have to be targeted about the specificities of programmes that were intended to unlock the specific opportunities for women but also the specific challenges women face in trying to seize those opportunities.
She indicated that if financing was an issue, one thinks about the Affirmative Financing Action for Women in Africa (AFAWA), a groundbreaking programme of the African Development Bank Group that was really starting to change the game on this enduring challenge of women accessing finance.
She said in its model of making financing available to commercial banks so that they could lend to women entrepreneurs, women engaged in multiple ventures of a business nature and that they were making financing that is affordable available to women.
Dr Kategekwa said that they could expect it to start to change the game in terms of the ability for women not only to start but to stay in business and to scale their businesses.
She said from the regional integration perspective they were excited about that because what it means was that the capacities could be built to start to engage in these huge opportunities that the African Continental Free Trade Area (AFCFTA) was Creating.
Apart from AFAWA, she touched on another AfDB Group-led initiative by President Akinwumi Adesina, the Youth Entrepreneurship Investment Banks.
This, she said, was powerful in putting the wind in the sail of the ideas of Africa’s young people.
Dr Kategekwa noted that when young people have ideas, which they could transform into businesses, they could transform into products or transform them into services.
She said it would be a valid business proposition that could start their process of creating incomes and generating wealth.
“The hope is that these ideas at some point can be transformed into the industries of the future,” she said.
She said AfDB Group sees these two programmes and many more at the Bank having a huge transformative impact on the landscape of women and women enterprises in Africa.
GNA