Visa issues grant to assist African female Investment managers in expanding their operations.

Visa has announced a grant to assist African female Investment managers in expanding their operations.

Visa has awarded The African Women Impact Fund (AWIF), a partnership between Standard Bank and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa(UNECA) funding. The award will be used to meet the working capital requirements of 55 women who responded to AWIF’s call to action and have been a part of their program since 2020 throughout South, East, and West Africa.

The grant is an expansion of the She’s Next program, a global advocacy program for women-owned businesses to Sub-Saharan Africa in order to further champion and support African women business owners as they create, sustain, and progress their enterprises.

Obstacles faced by women in the finance industry.

Building sustainable businesses continues to present several difficulties for African women fund managers. Due to institutional impediments and investor bias, research indicates that progress in increasing the visibility and involvement of women fund managers is going slowly.

The opportunity to close the gender gap is highlighted by the fact that women only make up 7.6% of private equity in Africa and that only 7% of venture capital and private equity goes to women-owned enterprises in emerging markets.Less than 1.3% of the $69.1 trillion in global financial assets are handled by women and people of color, which further reflects this.

The aim of She’s Next to help women owned businesses thrive and our ambition with this grant is to enable access in a space where women owned firms are under-represented. Through this programme we aim to ensure that women are not only recipients but become decision-makers where institutional funding for businesses is concerned

The funding will ensure that these business owners are able to focus on growing their enterprises without the burden of managing short-term debt and other operational costs related to building a successful business,

the head of Sub-Saharan Africa at Visa, Aida Diarra, senior vice president, said.

Areas of focus.

Three areas will be covered by the AWIF grant:

  • Portfolio management skills include administration, risk management, and portfolio structuring.
  • Identification of investment possibilities, due diligence, mandate alignment, ongoing monitoring of investments and operations, and
  • Operational support which includes back-office and operational support, human resource management, the installation of systems, and vendor management.
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