While data indicates that there has been significant achievement in financial inclusion in Rwanda, challenges remain for women entrepreneurs to access finance. On the sideline of the Annual Summit of Financial Alliance for Women, The New Times’ Alice Kagina had an exclusive interview with Soraya Hakuziyaremye, the Governor of the National Bank of Rwanda (BNR), to discuss what Rwanda is doing to bridge the gender finance gap and how it will leverage the Women Entrepreneurs (WE) Finance Code to promote women-tailored financial solutions. Below are excerpts: Can you give us an overview of where Rwanda stands when it comes to the ease of access to finance for women entrepreneurs? Rwanda has made a lot of progress over the last 15 years. In 2008, only 21 per cent of Rwandans had access to a formal bank or microfinance account and today, we are at 92 per cent of Rwandan adults. Obviously, this has been driven mainly by mobile money services, but also the expansion of our banking and microfinance sectors. However, having access to a bank account or a mobile money wallet is not enough for financial resilience of households or even businesses. We are trying to address one specific challenge. How come women entrepreneurs do not get access to formal credit at the same rate as men? We also know that micro and small businesses generally have challenges accessing credit but when it comes to women-owned or women-led businesses, that challenge is more acute in Rwanda. Of all loans that are dispersed by our banking or microfinance sector, only 16 per cent go to micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises. Yet, these enterprises represent 99 per cent of all enterprises. When it comes to women, only 25 per cent of those 16 per cent go to them. So, we are trying to find ways to reduce that gap. When we look at the ratio globally, it is estimated that if we were to close the gender gap in financing of women entrepreneurs, it would add up to $6 trillion to the global economy. That's around 5.4 per cent if I take the global GDP in 2024. Applying the same ratio to Rwanda's GDP, we could earn up to $700 million by just closing the gender gap in financing of women entrepreneurs. So, it's important to celebrate Rwanda’s milestone to almost reach universal access to finance, but it has to go beyond just payments or transactional accounts. It has to be access to credit, access to insurance, services, and then investments. How do you envision WE Finance Code driving financial inclusion for women, particularly for unbanked women and women-led MSMEs? There is a commitment now by our 11 banks, the National Bank of Rwanda, and the Ministry of Trade and Industry to collaborate to address the challenges and obstacles that women entrepreneurs face in accessing formal financial services, but also accessing credit. This is a commitment to use data to be able to have the right solutions for women entrepreneurs get access to credit, but it also forces banks to create financial products that are tailored to the needs of women and we hold ourselves accountable because we have to report at global level on the growth of credit, which is the ultimate goal to those women entrepreneurs. However, this finance code goes beyond just access to formal credit to looking at what those women need in terms of business and financial education, networks to get access to finance, and then learning from their peers in the 28 countries that have already signed up to the code. As a regulator, how do you ensure that regulatory frameworks at both national level and within financial institutions do not stifle the business environment, especially for women-led SMEs and eventually graduate to large businesses. The National Bank of Rwanda has always been particularly attentive to making sure that the regulatory environment that we set is inclusive and there has been efforts to put in place and implement gender-inclusive finance initiatives at the bank level, including one financial literacy programme targeting women in rural areas. We have now trained 25,000 women in four districts – Nyaruguru, Nyamasheke, Rulindo and Ngoma – in the use of mobile money services and we also collaborate with the industry on other awareness campaigns of financial literacy. Additionally, we are tracking gender-desegregated data and making sure that we know whether credit is going to men and women, from each financial institution, using what we call SuperTech (Supervision Technology) tools. Our electronic data warehouse is able to capture data from the different banks and microfinance institutions that show us the progress that we are making in closing the gender gap in finance. In March, we launched a financial inclusion dashboard that is accessible to the public and gives weekly data on how credit is being dispersed in our country. It puts pressure on the banks because we can track which one is financing women and which one is not. We are really happy that they have all committed to increase access to finance for women entrepreneurs and we are going to hold them accountable by showing data, but also holding ourselves accountable as central bank to other central banks globally, and within the ecosystem of signatories of the We Finance Code. What are some of the key things you hope to see taking shape, drawing from this summit? It's true, signing a commitment is one thing, but the results are what really count. I mentioned this figure of how much increasing finance to women entrepreneurs has the potential to increase our GDP. So, we will be sure that we see and can justify that we have contributed to increasing our GDP by $700 million just by increasing finance or facilitating loans to women entrepreneurs. Additionally, the ultimate goal would be that in 10 years, we don't have to have an annual summit on increasing finance to women because they will all have access to and use financial services at the same rate as men. We will probably have summits discussing all the challenges, but definitely not the challenge of women not accessing finance.
