Building an African Women’s Financial Inclusion Network

If your palm is open and your fingers are separate, the fingers will break as you hit a barrier. If you make a fist and your fingers are working together, you will break down the barriers.

Ms. Graça Machel

With women currently underrepresented at all levels of the global financial system, building a network to advance women’s roles in the sector is a pressing need to advance women’s financial inclusion. In Africa, New Faces New Voices (NFNV) has taken on this important mission.

NFNV is a women’s network which was established to expand the role and participation of women in the financial services sector. The network focuses on women’s access to finance and financial services, capacity and skills building for women to access finance as consumers, investors, and entrepreneurs, and increasing the visibility and influence of women in leadership and decision-making positions in the financial services sector.

Ms. Graça Machel, founder of the Graça Machel Trust, originally founded the NFNV network and joined an event in Nairobi in April 2023 to launch the network’s new strategy. During the event, she highlighted three key areas to advance women’s financial inclusion in Africa: documentation, data ownership, and collaboration with clear targets and goals defined.

Promoting documentation, data ownership, and collaboration in financial services

Documenting results in women’s financial inclusion efforts is a necessary first step in advancing women’s financial inclusion through the NFNV network. It allows organizations, and the network as a whole, to track progress, contributions, and stories, and also creates and encourages ownership among stakeholders. Documentation further allows for future generations to learn from current experiences and efforts, and to continue efforts that have already been started.

Data ownership and collection should be a second area of focus for the network. Building data in the region will enable stakeholders to evaluate and learn from their initiatives, and will create a better picture of successes and opportunities for improvement. Collecting the right data will also allow the NFNV network to evaluate how financial inclusion impacts women’s economic empowerment.

Finally, collaboration needs to be a collective goal of organizations in the network. To achieve appropriate, needs-based financial inclusion, women need to be represented, valued, and heard. This includes consulting with women in the informal sector who comprise 80% of the working population in Africa, as well as women-led businesses. Collaboration will ensure the most vulnerable women are reached and that sustainable economic growth can be achieved.

Let us collaborate on solutions with clear goals and targets. If we're moving together in the same direction, we'll be taken more seriously and achieve our goals faster together.

Ms. Graça Machel

While her generation of women was known for their critical role in the political liberation of African nations, Ms. Machel challenged the current generation of women to advocate for social and economic empowerment. Building a network that ensures women are represented in financial services through greater documentation, data ownership, and collaboration offers a path towards their financial inclusion and, ultimately, their social and economic empowerment.