2 October 2025, Nairobi: African Assure Fund (AGF) and Girls’s World Banking (WWB) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to strengthen help for ladies entrepreneurs throughout Africa. This partnership underscores each organizations’ dedication to advancing ladies’s financial empowerment by elevated entry to finance, technical help, and advocacy initiatives.
AGF, a number one pan-African assure and capability growth supplier, works to bridge the SME financing hole by providing risk-sharing mechanisms and capability growth help to monetary establishments. WWB is a worldwide NGO & investor devoted to advancing monetary inclusion for the 700 million ladies excluded from the formal monetary sector. For over 45 years, they’ve partnered with monetary establishments and policymakers to design, develop, and implement options that drive systemic change for ladies.
By means of this partnership, AGF and WWB will collaborate on initiatives designed to:
- Develop entry to credit score for women-led micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) by tailor-made assured options.
- Ship coaching and capability constructing for monetary service suppliers (FSPs) to strengthen their means to serve women-owned/led companies.
- Present technical help and mentorship to ladies entrepreneurs, enhancing their enterprise resilience and development.
- Advocate for insurance policies and practices that drive gender-inclusive finance throughout Africa.
In his remarks, AGF Group CEO, Jules Ngankam, emphasised the significance of ladies entrepreneurs to Africa’s development. “Girls entrepreneurs characterize one of many continent’s best untapped assets, but they face a major funding hole of USD 42 billion. This new partnership with WWB permits us to mix our strengths to interrupt these limitations and create a extra inclusive monetary ecosystem for women-led companies in Africa,” stated Jules.
Talking concerning the partnership, Mary Ellen Iskenderian, President and CEO of Girls’s World Banking, stated “We’re delighted to formalize this collaboration with AGF, which mixes our deep experience in designing monetary merchandise and options for ladies with their highly effective pan-African footprint and assure options. By leveraging our respective strengths in capability constructing, technical help, and de-risking monetary establishments, we’ll unlock vital capital for women-led MSMEs resulting in jobs being created and fostering financial development for all. This MOU establishes a framework to duplicate and scale impactful, gender-inclusive fashions, and we stay up for realizing this shared imaginative and prescient with AGF.”
The partnership may also pave the best way for replicating and scaling profitable fashions throughout AGF’s footprint in 44 African international locations, amplifying the influence on women-owned companies continent-wide.
About African Assure Fund
African Assure Fund (AGF) is a specialised assure supplier whose mission is to facilitate financial growth and poverty discount in Africa. To realize this, AGF will increase entry to finance for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) throughout key financial sectors by an array of assure merchandise and capability growth help. Since inception, AGF has unlocked greater than USD 5 billion in SME financing, by partnerships with over 250 accomplice monetary establishments throughout 44 African international locations.
AGF is backed by the next shareholders and sponsors: The Authorities of Denmark by the Danish Worldwide Improvement Company (DANIDA), the Authorities of Spain by the Spanish Company for Worldwide Cooperation (AECID), the African Improvement Financial institution (AfDB), French Improvement Company (AFD), Nordic Improvement Fund (NDF), Funding Fund for Growing International locations (IFU), German Improvement Financial institution (KfW), French Company for Personal Sector (PROPARCO), West African Improvement Financial institution (BOAD), International Affairs Canada (GAC), TechnoServe, Norad, Mastercard Basis and African Mental Property Group (OAPI).
African Assure Fund is rated AA- by Fitch Rankings.
For extra data, please go to www.agf.africa or contact Laban Cliff Onserio | Senior Communications & PR Officer – AGF | information.communications@agf.africa | +254 780 420 423
About Girls’s World Banking
For over 45 years, Girls’s World Banking has been devoted to serving the almost 700 million ladies excluded by the formal monetary sector. As an NGO, we accomplice with monetary establishments and policymakers to design, develop and implement options and applications that facilitate systemic change for ladies. As an investor, we advance ladies within the office and as prospects by direct fairness – to carry them safety, prosperity, and independence. Since 2018 Girls’s World Banking has reached greater than 91 million ladies and 54 million males, serving to to alter not solely their lives but in addition of their households, communities, and international locations.
It’s our core perception that monetary inclusion is important within the path to ladies’s financial empowerment. We all know that low-income ladies are disproportionately impacted by the results of systemic shocks together with local weather change. We now have made it our mission to speed up entry and utilization of scalable and commercially viable monetary options and to construct ladies’s capabilities. We’re addressing systemic and different biases that drawback ladies, by constructing the proof base by proprietary analysis. We advocate for inclusive regulation and governance by educating and informing key choice makers and leaders concerning the influence of discriminatory legal guidelines and practices. We acknowledge the potential of ladies throughout the globe, and it’s our evidenced perception that equal illustration drives social and enterprise outcomes and financial development.
For extra data, please go to www.womensworldbanking.org or contact cb@womensworldbanking.org
