Access to finance is still an impediment to realising women’s financial freedom, women activists have said.

During yesterday’s celebrations to mark International Women’s Day, in Kigali, Rwanda was hailed for being among developing nations with remarkable progress toward ensuring gender equity.

The Women’s Day celebrations in Rwanda, which coincided with the Global Women’s Forum in Kigali, also highlighted the challenges that still remain.

The summit was held under the theme, "Towards Vision 2020: Women Leading Innovative Transformation,” and was attended by about 350 women from across the world.

Oda Gasinzigwa, the minister for gender and family promotion, acknowledged that bureaucracy and lack of collateral from women seeking to invest in business have limited the number of women undertaking entrepreneurship path.

She said although Business Development Fund has been supportive – through offering 75 per cent guarantee to women’s business startups – banks continue to frustrate women seeking loans.

"We need deeper analysis of the statistics to see the challenges in business proposals being presented to the banks, the procedures, bureaucracy within our financial sector. We need to make sure that the numbers tally with big projects that can empower women,” Gasinzigwa said.

In Rwanda, women constitute 64 per cent of Parliament, 38 per cent of the Senate, 36 per cent in the Judiciary, and 40 per cent in the Cabinet.

In the global gender gap index 2014 that measured global gender disparities across 145 countries surveyed, Rwanda was ranked 7th by the World Economic Forum and second by the African Development Bank 2015 index.

About 86 per cent of farmers are women.

Women as CEOs

Gasinzigwa said the above figures are good to tell, but there is a need to see more women heading private companies.

"We need to support women in terms of processing and general value chain and financial institutions have to support women in agriculture,” the minister added.

Gasinzigwa cited lack of adequate capacities for women, access to credit and socio-economic discrimination among the constraints to women’s full participation in innovative transformation in Rwanda.

The Chairperson of ‘New Faces New Voices’ Rwanda chapter, Monique Nsazabaganwa, said more women in Africa are more into informal sector and agriculture enterprising.

She said, for such a sector to develop, financial institutions need to seize the opportunity by offering affordable credit.

Nsazabaganwa, who is also the deputy governor of the central bank, said women need to be accorded entrepreneurial skills to gain knowledge of the business environment.

Why banks are reluctant

Development Bank of Rwanda chief executive Alex Kanyankole said banks have been reluctant to offer credit to women entrepreneurs due to shoddy projects that present risks of losses, hence calling for more capacity building.

"Every bank wants to lend money because that’s their business, but there is a big issue of capacity to develop these projects into bankable proposals and yet banks can’t risk their money,” said Kanyankole.

Judith Aguga Acon, the technical director of Access to Finance Rwanda, said bankers have to develop products that easily benefit small and medium enterprises, which are dominated by women.

In Rwanda, access to finance stands at 63 per cent.

The International Women’s Day in the country was celebrated under the theme, "Step it up for gender equality, strive for women empowerment.”

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