NAIROBI, April 18 (Xinhua) -- The European Investment Bank (EIB) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on Thursday launched a new partnership to strengthen women's economic power in Kenya by tackling key barriers to financial inclusion.
The cooperation is spearheading a new 31.95-million-U.S.-dollar microfinance program in Kenya, backed by 15.97 million dollars from EIB Global and financing from KCB Bank Kenya.
"Kenya and the European Union are committed to delivering gender equality," Henriette Geiger, EU ambassador to Kenya, said in a statement issued in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya.
Geiger said the new cooperation will enhance opportunities and improve the lives of thousands of women and their families in Kenya and across Africa.
The initiative designed to ensure that 80 percent of final beneficiaries will be women, includes increasing access to finance for borrowers who lack collateral or credit history, risk-adjusted pricing to address high-interest rates, adapting digital services to the specific needs of female borrowers, and improving financial literacy.
This first scheme, to be launched in the coming weeks, will improve access to microfinance across Kenya and be managed by KCB Bank Kenya. It will leverage key learnings to enhance the impact of further gender equality engagement across Africa as the cooperation is expanded in the coming years.
The pioneering gender-focused microfinance scheme led by KCB Bank Kenya establishes a benchmark to tackle the 42-billion-dollar financing gap for female entrepreneurs in Africa.
KCB Bank Kenya Managing Director Annastacia Kimtai said despite their dominance, women's economic potential is dwarfed by multiple challenges such as the lack of appropriately designed financial products, weak institutional capacity, and lack of incentives within banks to target and lend to women. ■
