Dar es Salaam, May, 2021 – Ecobank Tanzania, a member of Ecobank Group, the leading pan-African bank, is launching its flagship Women’s Programme ‘Ellevate’ to empower and support women-led and/or women focused enterprises with the financial and value-added solutions that will help their businesses reach their full potential and succeed.
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) account for about 90% of all businesses in Africa and women own about a third of all registered African SMEs. Indeed, one-in-four (25.9%) of adult women in Africa start or manage a business. However, women have not enjoyed equal access to high quality, demand driven financial services and it is estimated that women-owned SMEs face a US$42 billion financing gap, making lack of access to financing a common constraint to their business growth.
Charles Asiedu, Managing Director, Ecobank Tanzania said: “The growth of women-led and women-focused businesses have been long hampered by range of impediments, including access to finance. We have specially designed Ellevate to meet the needs of women entrepreneurs through the provision of comprehensive, customized and tailormade solutions which include favorable lending rates, smart cash management enablement and a suite of value-added services such as leadership training, mentoring and networking opportunities. Ecobank is allocating a minimum of 10% of its Commercial Banking loan portfolio to women’s businesses.
“Women-led businesses are a largely underserved market and Ecobank Tanzania is determined to help them reach their potential, grasp business opportunities and become both scalable and sustainable. This will enable them to play a major role in Africa’s social and economic development, in addition to creating millions of the jobs needed by this and future generations of Tanzanians.” For further information about Ellevate, please visit www.ecobank.com/ellevate
