Global gender justice requires access to the online economy. Who supports Digital Financial Inclusion?

Many forces perpetuate the global economic gender gap and discourage women from economic progress, even as female entrepreneurship is increasing around the world. The World Bank estimates that there are more than 6 million women-owned micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in developing countries and that almost 20% of working-age women own their own businesses.

One factor is that women’s work tends to be informal. More than 30% of women in the non-agricultural workforce are self-employed in informal enterprises; in Africa this figure rises to 63%. They are more likely to work from home and engage in small entrepreneurship in traditional sectors such as retail and services. But size aside, the income they generate helps meet critical household needs while providing long-term economic independence.

Part of the solution to achieving equity, therefore, focuses on removing barriers to the tools that enable small businesses to thrive in the larger, increasingly digital economy. A new philanthropic coalition has recently formed around the issues of digital justice – with a focus on access to digital financial services, tools and technologies.

The effort was one of many philanthropic and programmatic developments to emerge from the recent 77th session of the UN General Assembly. Supporters include global philanthropies across borders and perspectives, including the US-based Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Aliko Dangote Foundation, Africa’s largest economic empowerment funder. The push has also attracted advocacy from empowerment leaders like the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, who have made the cause a key issue.

As global leaders worked to usher in a new era of digital collaboration during the UNGA session, here’s how philanthropy coalesced around a Women’s Digital Financial Inclusion Advocacy Hub – and ignited a movement toward digital equality for women.

The big picture

During UNGA week, one of several key themes discussed was the role that digital collaboration can play in achieving a more just world, leading governments, NGOs and the private sector to pool a total of $295 million to support digital inclusion at the public infrastructure level.

Work on gender equality focused on an Advocacy Hub for Women’s Digital Financial Inclusion (WDFI) launched a few months earlier, in July, by Women’s World Banking (WWB) and the UN Community Development Fund. The hub seeks to connect and strengthen local coalitions based on the idea that supporting “small and micro” women entrepreneurs is one of the fastest ways to drive inclusive growth, while recognizing the lack of digital access as a key cause for their systematic separation from the economic mainstream.

The WDFI Advocacy Hub fosters innovation that helps women entrepreneurs operate at scale through five key goals: empowering women micro-entrepreneurs to go online and grow their digital footprint; to help them acquire the digital and financial skills they need to make confident and informed decisions about financial services; ensuring access to women-centric digital financial services, including payments, digital credit, savings and insurance; and growing data collection about their work to ensure they are seen and understood locally and globally. The fifth goal is a long-term commitment to creating and growing sustainable local markets through accelerated digital finance engagement.

Global and local support

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has committed $200 million to the grand goal of expanding the global digital public infrastructure through tools such as payment and data sharing systems and digital IDs. That commitment is just one of many Gates made during UNGA week, but Gates acknowledged in the announcement that there is “not a single Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) that digital public infrastructure doesn’t address in one way or another.” will advance. It is amazing in international development when a targeted investment can have spillover effects in almost any subject area that is close to our hearts.”

Gates also committed an additional $5.5 million specifically for the hub. Deon Woods Bell, Senior Advisor for Global Policy and Financial Services for the Poor at the Gates Foundation, said she takes two approaches to running the portfolio – global and local. She spent part of her time during the UNGA focusing on national support and encouraging leaders to keep women in line when it comes to digital financial services. But success, she said, lies in the ability to reach local communities. She also applies learned experiences to her work. Thoughts of every woman in her life run through the way she administers programs, including understanding the pressures on working women and a disabled family member who reminds her how inclusive program needs to be.

Global challenges such as governance structures and cultural norms can be changed incrementally, according to Woods Bell, through digital investments in measures such as a basic cellular network that empowers women to connect to the digital world from their own local communities and create new communities of their own.

This view is shared by a partner in the movement and center, the Aliko Dangote Foundation – which was founded in 1994 by businessman Aliko Dangote, the “Bill Gates of Africa” ​​- and is the only foundation on the continent that Gates as a foundation finances partners.

As the largest private non-profit foundation in Africa, ADF works to drive social change through strategic investments that improve health and well-being, promote quality education and expand opportunities for economic empowerment. Economic work grew organically, according to CEO and managing director Zouera Youssoufou, who said funding priorities followed Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. “First came safety – health. Once you survive,” she said, “then you can learn and join the economic sphere.”

As the largest economic empowerment funder in sub-Saharan Africa, ADF is actively involved in expanding women’s access to digital financial services. Youssoufou spoke of a microcredit program that also makes cell phones the basis of digital empowerment. Phones come loaded with a SIM card and $100, which are usually “redeemed” at local stores with just one instruction: “do good.” Check-ins at 3, 6 and 12 months showed that women used 85% of the funds productively, leading to an expansion to about 10% more of the 774 LGAs or local authorities in Nigeria.

To date, 35 organizations from around the world have joined the hub and local coalitions have been formed in Ethiopia and Indonesia. Going forward, the partners hope that strengthening each other’s actions and voices will help reshape the global economy to make it work for all and help women reach their full economic potential – locally and globally.