African Development Bank and Government of Chad Sign $650,000 Grant Agreement to Expand Digital Financial and Non-Financial Services to Women and Youth | African Development Bank

The African Development Bank’s Africa Digital Financial Inclusion Facility (ADFI) has signed a $650,000 grant agreement with the government of Chad to provide innovative digital financial and non-financial services to women and youth.

The funding will benefit the Microfinance Development Support Project for Women and Youth Entrepreneurship, which aims to strengthen women’s economic empowerment and youth entrepreneurship in rural Chad. The project consists of three components: improving the supply of microfinance services and developing digital finance; stimulate demand for financial services; and strengthen the entrepreneurial ecosystem in rural Chad.

The financial support of the Africa Digital Financial Inclusion Facility (ADFI), which also provides technical assistance, as well as the supervision of the Human Capital Skills and Youth Development Department and the Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa (AFAWA) initiative, aims to supporting greater financial inclusion and job creation opportunities not only by building the capacity of microfinance institutions to develop new digital financial services for excluded women and youth, but also by the first FinScope study to assess supply and demand of financial services assessment in Chad. Co-funding of approximately $12.8 million comes from the African Development Bank’s Transition Facility Fund, and the bank’s Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa initiative contributed $673,500.

Ali Lamine Zeine, Country Manager of the African Development Bank for Chad, said: “At the African Development Bank, we recognize that we play an important role in supporting innovative technology that can increase access to and use of digital finance solutions and can stimulate entrepreneurship, especially among excluded and disadvantaged groups.” He added: “This initiative contributes to the delivery of our High 5 strategic priorities by aiming to build a robust and sustainable microfinance sector in Chad, with the potential to bridge barriers to inclusive digital finance solutions, the accelerate economic resilience, reduce poverty and boost growth. .”

In Chad, banking services are largely inaccessible outside of urban areas; only 7% of Chadians have access to financial services and thus resort to the informal system or loan sharks. Despite the implementation of the Government of Chad’s National Financial Inclusion Strategy (2019-2024), most of the country’s 115 registered microfinance institutions are still struggling to meet the needs of marginalized groups, especially small businesses, due to a lack of infrastructure, capacity and reliable technological solutions.

The African Development Bank, together with its partners, has launched the Africa Digital Financial Inclusion Facility to make catalytic investments to support innovative ideas and use blended finance to promote impactful scaling. By working with the bank’s regional member countries and offices to integrate digital finance solutions into all their operations, ADFI aims to support initiatives that have the potential to make a significant contribution to building resilience, mitigating risk and strengthening economic empowerment.

“Ensuring that vulnerable groups have adequate access to financial and non-financial services is essential for bridging the gender gap and creating economic opportunities for financially excluded groups, especially for women and youth who bear the brunt of such inequalities,” says Sheila Okiro, ADFI Coordinator.

About Africa Digital Financial Inclusion Facility (ADFI)

ADFI works to make digital financial solutions in Africa valuable, affordable, secure and accessible by removing barriers to the growth of digital financial inclusion in general and narrowing the gender gap in financial inclusion in particular. Current ADFI partners are the French Development Agency (AFD); the Ministry of Economy and Finance, France; the Ministry of Finance, Luxembourg; the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; the financing initiative for women entrepreneurs; and the African Development Bank, which also hosts the fund. For more information: www.adfi.org