 if you have to deal with one problem'S Life, if it's an Fabulous View, life is not easy. Every day you have to deal with one problem or the other.人's life is so hard mainly for us as traders but nobody could trust you because you could not be identified. I do business. I buy milk from Uganda, I take it to Kenya, from Kenya I buy sugar. Before I need to keep all money in my pack which is risky but this time I am not worried I can pay using my savings, or I can pay using my deposit. It simplified the time and costs of trade for me. Before, everybody was supposed to use a passport which was costly and the process of getting it was long. National ID, it tells people that this is Agnes. It proves whom I am. When I have an official national ID, I feel secure and safe as a woman as a trader. My business has helped me as a single parent and have managed to maintain my family. I can help my siblings, my friends, yeah. Women form the bedrock of our homes and by extension our society so if we help them grow their businesses we'll be able to have a very good economy overall. Welcome no matter where you're logging in from today. It's great to have you joining us for this important conversation about digital financial inclusion for women in Africa. I feel that the voices we just heard in that video really highlight why everything we'll discuss in the next hour or so matters so much. As a journalist from Uganda who's traversed the continent for my reporting, it feels clear to me that whether it's women traders in Uganda or farmers in Gabon there is no shortage of diligence or entrepreneurial spirit across the continent but there's often a radical imbalance when it comes to the opportunities available to make the most of those qualities. Investing in women's economic empowerment sets a direct path towards things I believe we all want to see gender equality, inclusive economic growth and poverty eradication. Of course we've now got the COVID pandemic as a backdrop to all of this and it's highlighted just how important digital financial inclusion is if we're going to build back as better fairer societies. The goal of building a fairer society is one that must involve collaboration at all levels and that's why today we'll be hearing from global champions, country leaders and local institutions who are all deeply interested in partnering to promote inclusive recovery in Africa. This very conversation is happening thanks to a partnership in FACTS, the G7 partnership for women's digital financial inclusion in Africa was launched in 2019 to support African governments and financial institutions to build more inclusive digital financial systems. Now this partnership is drawing from various strengths of the Africa Digital Financial Inclusion Facility, the World Bank, the United Nations Capital Development Fund, the Abdul Latif Jamil Poverty Action Lab and the Oxford Lebatnik School of Government. Implementation resources are provided by the Government of France and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation so our thanks to all of them. Now as we begin, we'll start off by hearing from a very special guest. Since 2009, Her Majesty Queen Maxima of the Netherlands has served as the United Nations Secretary General's special advocate for inclusive finance for development. There is a short way to say that, the UNS GSA. As special advocate, Queen Maxima is a leading global voice on advancing universal access to and responsible usage of affordable, effective and safe financial services. She raises awareness, serves as a convener, encourages leaders and supports actions to expand financial inclusion at a global and a country level, all in close collaboration with partners from the public and private sector. An important focus of her work is enabling responsible technology for financial inclusion in support of the United Nations sustainable development goals. It's an honour to have her here. Queen Maxima, welcome. Thank you very much for the kind introduction, ladies and gentlemen. It is an honour to be here. I would like to recognize African policy makers listening today, as well as the leadership of Minister Le Maire and Mrs. Melinda French Gates. Thank you also to Mr. Jibo and Mr. Kibombo for sharing their perspectives. It is a challenging moment for the world. Job and incomes continue to be lost due to the pandemic. Governments, many of which have expanded unprecedented fiscal resources are grappling with uneven results from recovery efforts. Although per capita income in 90% of advanced economies is expected to bounce back to pre-pandemic levels next year, only one-third of low and middle income countries are expected to do the same. These inequalities underscore the importance of supporting an inclusive economic recovery. This is particularly relevant in Africa where 63% of women live and work outside the formal financial system. Our small businesses, which were among groups disproportionately affected by the pandemic, account for the overwhelming majority of employment. What does an inclusive recovery mean for Africa? It means understanding women's specific experiences in the face of COVID-19 and placing them at the centre of efforts to boost resilience. But why? Why women? Because women have been the hardest hit by the pandemic. They have exited labour force in far greater numbers of men. They are often primary caregivers at home. They rely more on informal work and subsist infarming, making them increased exposure to production and climate-related shocks. And they also are confronted with more complex social norms. Today I offer three reflections on what we have learned the past year about the role of digital financial services to support an inclusive recovery for women across Africa. First, investing in digital public goods that support financial inclusion for women is no longer a luxury. It is a necessity. These goods, as many as you know, include digital ideas and connectivity. They also include regulations supporting digital payments, well-functioning and interoperable payment systems and rules on protecting consumers and managing data. It is important that these investments are made with the specific needs of women in mind from the start. For example, developing payment services that work with a variety of mobile phones is important, given the gender gap in smartphone ownership. Countries across Africa, including Togo, Namibia, Burkina Faso, Mvena, to name a few and accelerate these investments and deliver quick economic relief to citizens via digital payments. Some actively prioritized women in doing so, these programs provide underserved groups an on-ramp to financial inclusion and they create opportunities to access and use other products including savings and insurance. These investments should be applauded. So now is the time to help bring forward countries that still lack behind. We have the technical solutions. Government can step up commitments to accelerate these investments for the benefit of women and of economic recovery overall. The second point is we must invest in digital solutions that support Brazilian and livelihoods of African women. In practice, this means looking beyond access to basic accounts and towards savings and insurance products. Let us make sure that people have the proper tools to build long-term buffers. Using technology and innovation to better meet the financial needs of women is extraordinarily important. For example, in Tanzania, women with access to solar lamps through a pay-as-you-go financing reported being more likely to work outside of home. Tasks that were previously needed daylight could now be completed at night, leaving more time for productive labour activities during the day. Women also reported more flexibility to manage childcare and house of chores. Yet, while today's global pay-go market which is 100 million people, only 25% of the customers are women, so more tailored solutions are clearly needed. Promoting resilience and livelihoods also means supporting the recovery of women in businesses from COVID-19 through targeted credit lines and well-designed business training programs. And, of course, encouraging microfinance institutions and cooperatives which remain a key provider of financial services to women in Africa to digitize in order to offer services much more efficiently. The third point is that we can acknowledge that digital technology is not itself a panacea. Women need the appropriate skills and opportunities to use it meaningfully. Bolshing digital and financial capability will help ensure digital technology does not create further divide between men and women. Closely related, we can also double down on efforts to protect users from fraud, ensure data protection, and address algorithm biases in digital platforms. Looking ahead, we have an historic opportunity to recover from COVID-19 in an inclusive manner. One that gives African women and girls the financial tools they need to live more productive and safer lives. To do this, we will need to accelerate foundation reforms that support digital financial inclusion for women and invest in interventions that foster long-term resilience, financial health and improve development outcomes. The G7 partnership offers an excellent platform to accomplish this. I encourage pillar partners to intensify work and coordination amongst themselves. It is also important to build out a comprehensive result framework to ensure accountability under the partnership. I also would like to recognize local leaders active across Africa committed to supporting women's digital financial inclusion. The G7 partnership pillars are ready to support and provide the technical tools to make meaningful change on the ground. Thank you so much. Thank you very much, Queen Maxima, for highlighting some really key points there. It's particularly striking the unevenness of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic response that you mentioned and brings to the four why foundational reforms that support digital financial inclusion are so necessary. Thank you very much. Well, next it's my pleasure to introduce Minister Le Maire, Minister of the Economy, Finance and the Recovery of Plans. Minister Le Maire is one of the principal architects of the G7 partnership for women's digital financial inclusion as it was launched during the French G7 presidency back in 2019. Now, like Queen Maxima Minister Le Maire is involved in helping the G7 partnership implement through his advocacy work with African leaders and by raising awareness of key policy and investments to advance digital financial inclusion in Africa. We asked Minister Le Maire to make a couple of reflections, first on the genesis of the G7P, given his government's ambitions of translating objectives into action. Also, we asked him to describe from his perspective as a G7 finance minister why the investments in DFI for women are critical to post-pandemic recovery and I think we can all use a bit of good news after the year we've had. So we also asked him if he could think of an example of a promising project in the area of digital financial inclusion that's being implemented this year. So let's welcome Minister Le Maire. Good afternoon everyone. I'm very pleased to join your event today two years after the release of the report on the G7 partnership for women's digital financial inclusion in Africa. I really want to warmly thank Melinda Gates and the Gates Foundation for producing such fantastic work. Melinda, thank you for that. The report had suggested the implementation of leading policies to better include women in the development of digital financial uses. The key issue was to give momentum to the report's policy propositions. Action needs to be taken and during France's presidency of the G7 the partnership for women's digital financial inclusion in Africa the G7P was created and this makes me very proud as Minister of Economy and Finance. The partnership offers immense opportunities to unlock digital financial inclusion for women. It brings together donors and stakeholders to support African authorities in providing greater access to their digital financial systems especially to women. In order to make this partnership sustainable and effective on the long term, I do welcome the collective decision to publish a G7P annual accountability report. It will improve our cooperation. Initiatives such as the G7P are especially important in times of crisis. The COVID-19 crisis has exacerbated social and gender inequalities especially in the access to digital tools. The crisis has had massive impact on women all around the world. Women make up for 70% of health workers. They were greatly exposed to the virus. Domestic tasks precarius positions and jobs in the informal sector all supported by women were the most affected by the crisis. But the COVID-19 crisis has also revealed how much digitalization contributes to the resilience of our economies. The crisis has also accelerated the shift towards digitalization in financial services, communication and policy responses. In order to reduce gender inequalities it is therefore essential that we collectively invest time and money to unlock digital inclusion for vulnerable populations especially for women. This is why I strongly encourage African governments and international donors to massively invest in digital financial inclusion as part of their post-COVID-19 recovery plans. Implemented by several institutions the French contribution to the G7P $25 million is primarily dedicated to certain investment programs. This contribution and more broadly all contributions to all programs supporting entrepreneurship in Africa are designed to have a decisive impact on women's wealth and inclusion. As an example we co-financed the AFAWA initiative to reduce the financial gap affecting women in Africa. Now to answer the moderator's question Among many other projects I would like to highlight our contribution to the West African Monetary Agency project launched this year by the Africa Digital Financial Inclusion Facility. This leading project aims at implementing a unique gender-based digital financial inclusion framework in the 15 member states of ECOWAS. The project will give women the ability to take part to local digital financial markets. It could benefit millions of people across the region. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to take part to this discussion. I wish you all a very good event and once again thank you Melinda for your involvement in this key issue. Thank you to Minister LeMair for those remarks and how exciting it is to hear about that project with the West African Monetary Agency with 15 nations in the ECOWAS regions. It means best potential to affect 350 million people so that really could have an enormous impact. And speaking of impact I'm delighted to introduce the speakers for our next segment now because these are women who truly are doing impactful work engaging with different facets of digital financial inclusion. With this next discussion we have an opportunity to dig a little deeper and get a clearer understanding of what's at stake when it comes to how inclusive digital financial systems in Africa are. In different times we might all be in the same room for this and while we miss the energy of physically being in the same space there are some silver linings. Doing things virtually means we can celebrate the opportunity to bring in voices from the field or on the ground and get you even closer to the stories behind this. So today you will meet Mariam Jibo the CEO of Advance Code Du Bois one of the leading microfinance institutions in Code Du Bois. Mariam is an innovator in the sector currently integrating digital tools to effectively support rural populations. Advance Code Du Bois is a member of the group Advance which operates on three continents with nine subsidiaries and its mission is to support the growth of micro small and medium sized enterprises by providing them accessible and affordable financial products and services. Advance Code Du Bois serves a lot of customers over 170,000 and employs over 650 people to actively support financial inclusion of disadvantaged populations. You'll also get to meet Grace Majara Jibombo she's nearly a two decade veteran in the financial inclusion space and she's currently the deputy director of the village savings and loan association team at Care Uganda. Now Care works to help the poorest people of the world especially women and girls get out of poverty serving over 60 million people in a hundred countries understanding the complexities of a supportive ecosystem. Grace's work brings together financial service providers, multinational organizations and the private sector to co-create innovative solutions and address the needs of unbanked women and youth. Melinda French Gates is a philanthropist, business woman and global advocate for women and girls. For over two decades she's served as the co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. Her poverty alleviation work and interactions in the field have led her to increasingly focus on gender equity as a path to meaningful change. So please welcome to our virtual stage the view from the field through the lens of Maryam Jibombo and Grace Majara and moderated by Melinda French Gates. So Maryam and Grace so great to be with you both today I'm so impressed by what you're doing on the African continent to help women with digital financial inclusion and I'm looking forward to this conversation. Very glad to be here. Thank you Melinda. Me too glad to be here and looking forward to our conversation. Great. So Grace maybe I'll start with you. This African partnership on financial inclusion we've heard some of the high level speakers talk about digital financial inclusion and infrastructure creating an infrastructure a payment system with digital payments can you talk a little bit about the communities that you've been working with and how that digital infrastructure really helps further your work? I would say that digital infrastructure is very beneficial to the people who work with especially the rural based women especially adolescent girls however quickly add that digital infrastructure without matching it with data it is not really very much beneficial to the intended beneficiary so I would give you an example for a well intended policy in Uganda that the financial the national financial strategy that he was formulated in 2019 it's really well intended and it's focused on women specifically women, youth the rural based communities and other vulnerable groups however it was not provided with measurement framework meaning that it's very hard to measure how it's delivered up to the last mile customer I would say to governments that it's very important to invest in research and collect sex disaggregated data so that it's able to be used to monitor track product uptake and usage and inform then inclusive policies I would give another example like if you were talking about the rural based women in Uganda and you are trying to pass on information on some of the digital solutions and platforms how best can you reach that woman is it through radio very difficult in most cases those women get their information from their savings groups and other groups and get that information from their friends and families so it's really very difficult to kind of reach this woman if you don't provide policies that are gender sensitive but also tailored to their needs that's a really good example because I think so often when we program we often in our work in development program thinking if I program in this way it's going to reach everybody but as you just said women in places sometimes than men Maryam can you talk a little bit about how does this play out in your work in Kotduvar Thank you Melinda, I think infrastructure is key but first if we take some steps back towards the basics and I will give you just an example of this woman it's the wife of a kofkoa farmer that we met during a financial literacy class living in the western part of Kotduvar her name is Ajua and she's in her mid-thirties and she came to us because in addition to supporting her husband to taking care of the household she has developed a side business a side kasava business and she was attracted by our offer because she wanted to save some money with the perspective of getting also some support by a tricycle to ease to facilitate her supplies and so the first question we asked Ajua was do you have a national identity card and her answer was no I don't and what we understand is that Ajua was born in the eastern part of Kotduvar her parents did not declare her birth she did not go to school she was helping her mother at home then when she got married she went west and settled down with her family and she tried three years ago to get an ID because she wanted to benefit from this national social security system that the government of Kotduvar was setting up but unfortunately because she could not access her birth certificate she never got the ID her birth village was far from her current home her parents passed away so what we understand is that Ajua has been living in this like a parallel world where she cannot access to all the facilities from the formal world education, coverage system and now financial services so if you don't have a birth certificate you cannot have an ID you cannot have a bank account so the hurdles to participate in the economy start a birth and what is critical is that UNICEF states that in Kotduvar three births out of four out of ten sorry go undeclared it means that it handicaps our possibility to access those rural communities and when we talk about physical ID let's talk also about digital we did develop digital and boarding processes to give access to those people in remote areas but in order to have a bank account you need to verify the ID and even a mobile money account you need to verify the ID and unfortunately the KYCs that are required by the regulators are paper based so this means that we had to design a mix of digital and paper which is very very costly so the regulators the governments have to think about of course secure and safe way to onboard clients but also fully digital this is key and last talking now about I would say infrastructure I think that's what we really miss on the ground today is one word interoperability and honestly it's like the shortest road to success we have discussed telling us look I send 20 USD to my mother every month my mother has a phone from telecooperator A I have a phone from telecooperator B because depending on the network the quality on the region the network quality is not the same so it means that in order to send money to my mother I have to go through two systems with additional cost and honestly that she tells us it's better to have the cash in hands it's less expensive for us so here governments have to sit down with MFI service provider in order to build a unique clearing system that will allow us to provide low cost digital transaction to the poor this is critical wow you're talking about so many of the steps that are needed to build a real digital financial platform Grace you've been doing this work now I think you said since 2009 so quite a long time what have you seen in terms of women accessing the system Miriam talked just briefly about when it doesn't work for a woman trying to transfer money without interoperability to another family member what have you seen that hinders women from actually taking advantage of these accounts not just signing up an opening account but actually using it and what do you do to overcome some of those barriers over time thank you very much that's a very good question I will start with something which I usually use in my work I usually say that we have whether it's civil society whether it's private sector whether it's public we are usually quick at providing information rather than organizing the problem so you find that most of the solutions and the products that are designed are more of prescriptive nature rather than addressing the problem and the problem will also add that of recent because of I'm calling it COVID era because of COVID era there is a digital COVID era where everybody has woken up and realized that digital is very important and it has provided solutions in a very difficult situation so even this era hasn't left women behind especially in Uganda especially in Africa East Africa mainly we've really depended on mobile money transfers you transform money to buy products you transform money to get treatment and all that and women have been part of that ecosystem however that ecosystem of COVID era has also been more prescriptive nature rather than Diogenesis so I will give an example where I have worked with so many women in savings groups and I met this one woman in one of the projects that I was implementing in Uganda so this project was providing women with the chance to open bank accounts and when we interacted with this woman like any other member in that group they had funds but these were future funds but the product was designed in a way to depend on that future fund so it was possible for this woman to open a bank account and be able to transact using her phone and we said in our hearts in our mind we have a solution for this woman or women like her so many of them signed up for the account but none of them completed the process of account opening so we said oh what is happening so we went back to interact with these women and particularly this woman I interacted with and her story was really capturing so she told us I have the phone but I can't open an account we said why she didn't at the time know the answer because even the bank itself had not explained very well to her in a simplified explanation to her to understand why she couldn't open an account so further investigation we realized that she had the phone but the same card in that phone was registered in her husband's name and yet it's a requirement to open a mobile bank account when we tried to change the sim card into her names it was not possible the husband would not really allow her to do so that was road block number one and then that's when I realized reflecting back that in recent development we are talking about technology as a solution but it's not in itself a solution especially to women financing inclusion we are forgetting the social norms that come up with the setup of our society the setup of the where we live our families and things like that this woman went ahead to tell us that even using this phone was causing problems with her husband because the husband wanted to know and he would check whom she had talked to which call has come which call has gone out and in the process he was also checking the SMS's meaning that she would find it very hard even the positive money on her mobile money meaning that even her privacy was taken away from her then to make matters worse she told me that look here even when I save you know savings groups allow these women to come together they save them at the end of 9 months or 12 months they share out so that they have a lump sum that they can use either to invest or even accumulate assets but because she's a woman at the end of that cycle she hands over all that money saved to her husband to decide on how best to use it and of course my evidence has proven that men have never been good at planning for the household needs like food education and all that so all those are some of the things that we never think about this woman was restricted in terms of living home even when she would go to get health services she would first ask for permission and sometimes that permission was not given to her so when we are kind of coming up with solutions we never think about some of those untold financial inclusion barriers which is the big elephant in the house the social norms and nobody is willing to even look at there when we are designing policies when we are designing products when we are implementing we usually forget about the impact on the social norms and how women have failed to benefit fully to get their financial autonomy from their efforts because of the social norms wow that is incredibly helpful Grace because I think so often we don't think about what are these other pieces going on in the home or the community that's holding a woman back what is your experience Miriam keeping women from saying this is for me I want an account or I want to use this account now that I have it I think something we have to acknowledge is that we are still living in a cash culture and so we do have and it will be the case I think for the next 20 years it will be progressive so we have to design system that takes into account this cash culture and I would say it associates the value which is trust it's critical so at Mansukativar we realized that we need to do to do more in terms of building trust and acknowledging these cash culture customers they need to make sure that the cash is safe they need to make sure that the cash is there they don't know you what we decided to do is our three things the first one is that we build a team of 30 financial inclusion trainers they each cover an area of about 75 square kilometers and they go from village to village they give classes where they speak about what is the bank account where does your money go when you put in a bank account what is behind your phone and you can take up to sometimes four visits to a same village to open only one bank account but it's absolutely necessary because the institution needs to be embodied the relationship to the institution needs to be embodied the second thing we have done is that we have decided to partner with economic association cooperatives or the VSLA's that are built by Grace, sorry and her colleague at CARES not only those partners do they connect us to the rural communities but we are able to base a relationship upon the existing relationship from CARES or from the cooperatives so we built upon the existing trust the existing relationship the existing legitimacy of this association so referral helps building this trust and lastly because we understood that the customer need to be reassured that his cash is available at any time we have people that are used to put money under the mattress and count it every night so when we realized that we decided to partner with local community leader and ask them to open an agent network a completely rural agent network in the village so that the customer can transact so cash in and cash out closer to home but also with somebody they know and this is where coming to access and usage the fact of building this trust the fact of giving access at any time to the customer to his account is essential in order to design a regulation around agent network which is of course safe for the customer to transact at a given point but also flexible enough to fit the needs of the poor and the rural communities I really like how you've both given us extremely concrete examples about how the pieces need to be built one on top of the other to pull women in and I think it's so important for the family then can they transact digitally but then we also know governments are putting a lot of digital social protection payments in through these systems because they realize if it actually reaches the woman not the man in the household she'll spend it on the family so it's really great to hear how you all are connecting these ideas to both what the high level is being discussed on the policies and platforms around for women and families so I really appreciate that I know you are a famous advocate for women economic empowerment and equality I've been a fan of you and in my stream of work I work with so many strong women probably who have a lot in common with you and they are caring for their families and their leaders solving problems in their own capacity and world how can we bring in and elevate these women's voice who do not have a global platform but can articulate their challenges that affect them and help continue designing their own solutions but also informing policy thanks for that question Grace I think what you brought up is incredibly important we can create this policy at the high level but if it's not informed with women's real life situations and the barriers that hold them back or the issues that they face day to day we'll never create the right policy and programming so it's the work that the two of you do with people on the ground where you can see women's lives and what affects them and hear okay this is how we need to change policy or programming we absolutely have to collect data on women's lives and their stories and we have to then take their voices and connect it to the high level leaders who are making these changes in country if we don't do that we're not going to be effective in what we do and how we help change whole societies for women so I absolutely agree we've got to have platforms to make sure that we connect these voices to the people who are making policy recommendations and one of the things that we've done this past year through the UN is this generation equality form and it's been a great place to bring those voices together but we need to have so many other places that we do it I am so encouraged from our conversation today hearing what you're both advancing Grace what you've been advancing over a number of years Miriam you've come into this field in the last two years but the way making apart the problems listening to women helping them lead lives and improve their own lives that's what leads to empowerment so I couldn't be more thrilled with our conversation today and really the way in which you're doing your programming but helping us think through these digital platforms and ID systems I really do think they're going to improve women's lives not just in one family but hundreds of millions of families so thanks for our conversation today thank you very much what a fantastic conversation to be able to listen into Miriam Jivel and Grace Majara in conversation with Melinda French Gates there so many things to take away from that I love that there were many concrete examples of things that governments and financial agencies can do Miriam talked about interoperability as one thing that would drastically improve women's participation in the digital economy she also talked about technology in itself not being a solution because the social context must be considered and I love that because what privacy means for many people might be a password but in the context that she was talking about it goes beyond that it's about what the social norms are and what barriers women face and how technology can help to get around some of those barriers Grace also really highlighted the importance of research and data how important it is to know what's working and come up with policies that are gender inclusive she said sometimes there is a tendency to be prescriptive rather than to diagnose the problems highlighting that sometimes the problem is we don't understand the problem and this is really about helping women design their own solutions we also heard about how the pandemic has disproportionately affected women we sadly heard that many women remain invisible to their national government and because of that they didn't receive the same levels of income support as men through the pandemic government leaders recognize the importance of digitalization to post pandemic economic recovery but as we've heard they need to put more emphasis and resources to make sure women are included fantastic conversation and one of the threads that has been running through the different insights we've heard today is that when we work together to remove those barriers that are preventing many African women from taking part in the digital economy they are then able to improve their economic opportunities and provide income security for their families and of course the wonderful thing about leveraging partnerships to advance this financial inclusion agenda is that there is strength in numbers the beautiful thing about collaboration is it divides the task and multiplies the success so as we end this conversation I hope you might spare a moment or two to think about how you two can contribute or continue contributing if you already are to the goal of digital financial inclusion for women in Africa because for women like Anjua who Maryam mentioned earlier who's running her Kassava selling business in Koteboa these initiatives can be life changing not just for her but for her family and for her community as well thank you ever so much for your time and attention today and goodbye