The African Development Bank’s Gender Equality Trust Fund will provide a $950,000 grant to the Africa Small and Medium Enterprise Business Linkages Program in Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger.
The grant, which will supplement an earlier $3.9 million financing grant from the Bank’s Transition Support Facility, is expected to bolster 1,400 women-led enterprises and contribute to the region’s economic resilience and social cohesion.
The Gender Equality Trust Fund supports the delivery and scaling of the bank’s Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa, or AFAWA, program. AFAWA aims to close the $42 billion gender financing gap for women-led African enterprises by promoting gender-transformative lending and non-lending operations.
“We are excited to extend the impact of the program that will reach more than a thousand women entrepreneurs across the Sahel region,” said Malado Kaba, the Bank’s Director for Gender, Women and Civil…
