Source: Times of Zambia / AllAfrica
NEW Faces, New Voices (NFNV) is a Pan-African advocacy group that focuses on expanding the role and influence of women in the financial sector.

Former South African first lady Mama Graca Machel who is the organisation's founder and patron, explained that NFNV is solidly founded on the slogan 'Multiplying Faces, Amplifying Voices, of women across the African continent.

The organisation is committed to the empowerment of African women across sectors such as finance, agriculture, media and science.

"The empowerment of women is not only a developmental issue, it is a very important economic issue. Those institutions that recognise the changes that are happening globally and take steps to make certain that they are participating in the next merging market, will reap the benefits of their investment," she said.

The Zambian Chapter of NFNV, which was launched in May 2014, and is led by its country director Penelope Mapoma, who is also the gender focal point person for Band of Zambia (BoZ), has been instrumental in advocating for improved banking services for women.

Ms Mapoma has served as a team leader for the research leading into the development of micro-finance regulations and was also in the lead technical team that set up the Financial Sector Development Plan (FSDP).

Today, the FSDP acts as the framework for extensive financial sector reform in Zambia and one of its key activities has been to advocate for increased financial inclusion and financial literacy among Zambians.

Ms Mapoma was also instrumental in facilitating the first-ever financial sector exhibition, a platform that brought together women in business and other key players in the financial sector.

This was done to create an environment that was conducive to allow dialogue in breaking barriers that inhibit access to finance for women.

In Zambia today, a number of banks have changed their product design to ensure that some products are directly targeted at women and and small and medium-scale enterprises.

In addition, BoZ has influenced commercial banks to establish 90 rural branches to foster increased participation in the financial sector, for vast majority of women living in rural areas.

In conjunction with various women groups, NFNV was able to pressure the banks into lowering the commercial lending rate for women.

With the help of the Bankers Association of Zambia (BAZ), BoZ facilitated making financial literacy part of primary, secondary and tertiary education, and in addition to this, mentorship is being provided to young women.

A central database of women in the financial sector has also been established, and this is monitored on annually to evaluate the numbers of women with improved skills, and those who occupy management positions.

According to research carried out by the organisation, if the financial and business sectors became more inclusive to women, the result would be a large-scale and fundamental shift in the business and financial landscape across Africa.

Although women constitute 50 per cent of Africa's population of one billion people, and that they make up 61 per cent of the active labour force, they still earn the lowest incomes globally.

On the other hand, women own about 26 per cent of formal businesses on the continent, and according to recent data, the world's fastest growth of women entrepreneurs is found in Africa.

The numbers of women working in the informal sector outnumbers men in all of Sub-Saharan Africa.

However, there is an estimated US$300 billion funding gap in financing women-owned businesses worldwide and the funding gap for Africa is about $20 billion.

In July 2014, the Zambia Chapter of the New faces, New Voices in partnership with the African Development Bank (AfDB), the Bank of Zambia (BoZ), the International Labour Organisation (ILO), and other UN agencies hosted the third African Women's Economic Summit (AWES) in Lusaka, Zambia.

This summit which was themed 'African Women Realising Africa's Economic Potential', sought to raise awareness, that inclusive growth in Africa cannot be realised with increasing women's participation in the economic and financial sectors.

This entails that women's financial inclusion needed to be accelerated at all levels, this follows a 2009 Finscope Study that revealed that more than two-thirds of the population lack access to financial services, with only about 10.6 per cent of women are banked, versus 17.3 per cent of men-a significant gap.

According to the 2012 World Bank Gender and Human Rights report, only 22 per cent of women have bank accounts.

Despite women having been identified as key drivers of sustainable development and economic growth, policies and cultures in Zambia and Africa do not entirely provide a conducive environment to harness their economic potential.

The concerted attempts by AWES to bring together women from the formal financial sector, the Government and other sectors, was envisaged as a positive step towards strengthening the financial inclusion of women.

Some of the policy objectives of the AWES include encouraging dialogue amongst regulators, policy makers, business leaders, NGO's and civil society groups on how to create more coordinated approaches to economically empower women.

In view of the cross-cutting nature of gender, the implementation of the National gender Policy entails that all socio-economic policies, programmes, plans, projects and national budgets are gender responsive.

This means that deliberate efforts need to be employed to ensure that barriers that prevent equal and effective participation of women and men in the formal and informal sectors are removed.

This is evidenced by Government's commitment reiterated by Finance Minister Alexander Chikwanda during the third AWES held in last month.

In his keynote address, Mr Chikwanda said women are a huge asset to Africa, because the growth of the primary sectors in Africa has predominantly been at household level at which women are a driving force.

"Unfortunately, women have never been recognised in this economic boom being experienced across the African continent and have continued to be treated as a coincidence to this newly found prosperity that we are enjoying as a continent," he said.

"We the policy makers have not tailored policies to answer their specific needs, while market players have exploited them in a way that cannot grow beyond subsistence level," Mr Chikwanda explained.

Mr Chikwanda called for accelerated banking and financial sector reforms to enhance women's inclusiveness and assist them access more affordable sources of finance.

BoZ assistant director for financial sector development Musapenda Phiri explained that mobile banking is the way to possibly increase outreach on the services.

"A survey that was done about three years ago indicated that to set up a bank branch in a rural area, it would cost about $300,000.

"Now if you are able to provide financial services in a particular area by reaching out to the people where they are found, then services like cell-phone banking will certainly reduce the costs, this is because whatever costs the banks incur, they eventually pass it on to the customers," he added.

The survey that was carried out in Zambia in 2005 and 2009 indicated that one of the reasons why people fail to access financial services was distance, time and the cost of transport to the nearest banks or financial institutions.

Having realised these and other gaps, BoZ pledged to develop and implement a gender mainstreaming strategy, and to also work with NFNV Zambian chapter to enhance the financial literacy programmes for women in Zambia, by 2015, by pledging to establish at least 5000 women entrepreneurships countrywide.

At the end of the three day summit, various organisations made pledges on how to foster continued economic development for women across the African continent.

As the country heads towards the 2015 deadline of the Millennium Development Goal(mdg) number three, which seeks to eliminate all forms of gender disparity by, financial inclusion and economic empowerment of women is a step in the right direction.

• Zambia