First Lady Margaret Kenyatta on Sunday, November 25, announced a new venture in partnership with the African Development Bank (AfDB) to explore new avenues of directly supporting efforts aimed at empowering Kenyan women and girls.
In a statement released by the President's Strategic Communications Unit (PSCU), the first lady indicated that the new venture singled out capacity-building activities for Kenyan women in business as one of the areas that the bank was keen on supporting.
"The commitment was made today by the bank's deputy director-general Nnenna Nwabufo during a meeting with First Lady Margaret Kenyatta on the sidelines of the ongoing Global Gender Summit in Kigali, Rwanda," the statement from PSCU read in part.
Nwabufo, who heads AfDB’s East Africa Regional Development and Business Delivery Office, assured the First Lady that she was committed to ensuring that women in Kenya gained from the bank's Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa (Afawa) projects.
Afawa is a pan-African initiative to bridge the $42 billion financing gap facing women in Africa.
It's approach challenges the gender gap in access to finance and liberates women’s entrepreneurial capacity in Africa.
“We could do this through capacity building to enable Kenyan women to benefit from development projects implemented by the government in partnership with African Development Bank,” Nwabufo was quoted.
The first lady welcomed AfDB’s commitment to partner with Kenyan women stating it would go a long way in transforming the lives of the beneficiaries.
She fronted the Beyond Zero campaign as a key engagement point that the bank could use in its engagements with women across the country.
The Global Gender Summit that is organised by the African Development Bank is slated to run from November 25 to 27, at the Kigali Convention Centre, Kigali, Rwanda.
