Posted by Out of its $10 million investment commitment to the Alitheia Fund, the Bank of Industry (BOI) has distributed $6.02 million, promoting gender equality and women’s financial inclusion.
The Alitheia Fund is an innovative $100 million gender-lens fund that supports businesses in diverse industries run by women.
Over the weekend, at the BoI International Women’s Day (IWD) 2024 event with the theme ‘Inspire Inclusion,’ Dr. Olasupo Olusi, managing director of BoI, made this statement.
In her capacity as executive director of the Micro Enterprise Directorate at BoI, Ms. Mabel Ndagi represented Olusi, who stated that the topic of the 2024 IWD was in line with BoI’s dedication to creating an inclusive work environment and the diversity of the bank’s clients.
The year’s theme, he continued, calls on all of us to do more than just talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion; it demands that we live by these ideals.
When asked about the bank’s support for women-owned enterprises, the managing director of the Bank of Ibadan (BoI) mentioned that the institution served as a local execution partner for the BRAVE initiative in Nigeria, run by the Islamic Development Bank.
He claims that the goal of this $14.27 million program is to help women-owned companies, especially in places hit hard by economic hardship due to war and other social upheavals.
There were 551 recipients of the N 5.9 billion that the bank had paid out as of February 2024. He announced their partnership with the African Development Bank (AfDB) on the AFAWA initiative, a Pan-African effort to close the $42 billion funding gap that African women experience.
According to Olusi, the Bank of Ivory Coast (BoI) has designated gender funding as one of its six thematic essential areas of attention and support, and it has also established specialized finance and business assistance for female entrepreneurs.
This, he said, was in keeping with President Bola Tinubu’s steadfast resolve to guarantee economic assistance for low-income mothers and women, social inclusion, and women’s empowerment.
He went on to say that the federal government and subnationals, the organized business sector, civil organizations, and individuals all needed to work together proactively if women were to achieve full inclusion.
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Mrs. Omoyemi Akerele, founder of Lagos Fashion Week, stressed the importance of the textile sector embracing sustainability methods in order to significantly empower women.
Akerele made the observation that creativity was a form of community art and that its function in the environment greatly aided community development; he went on to say that the carbon footprint left by unsustainable textile production patterns was one issue with sustainability.