Grace Ashiru
Visa, a company that handles payments worldwide, has announced a grant to help African women entrepreneurs. The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), Standard Bank, and African Women’s Impact Fund (AWIF) have collaborated on a project called the African Women’s Impact Fund (AWIF), which aims to increase the amount of funding available to female fund managers working in South, East, and West African countries.
She’s Next is a global program that supports women-owned businesses, and Visa’s donation to the African Women’s Investment Fund (AWIF) is an extension of that program. It has been made bigger to include Sub-Saharan Africa so that it can help and support African female business owners even more as they start, run, and grow their businesses.
The purpose of She’s Next is to support the growth of women-owned companies. Our objective in offering this award is to make it possible for women-owned companies to gain entry into a market in which they are under-represented. Aida Diarra, Visa’s Senior Vice President and Head of Sub-Saharan Africa, remarked.
Through this program, we hope to ensure that women are not only receivers of institutional investment for enterprises but also become decision-makers in this area.
According to the statistics, African women only make up 6% of private equity, while women-led enterprises in emerging markets receive just 7% of private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC).
