New Faces New Voices will host the 2nd African Women’s Economic Summit – “African Women: Financing The Future” this July in Nigeria along with the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the African Development Bank (AfDB). NFNV is a pan-African network of women in the financial and business sectors. Host country Nigeria is will lead the economic terms in the continent; it will become the biggest economy shortly. Nigeria and its Central Bank have been involved with women’s financial issues and would be a good model for other countries to see.
The focus of the summit will be on the women SME market, which has been identified as a key growth area in emerging markets. Graça Machel, the founder of NFNV and the wife of Nelson Mandela has been instrumental in creating this conference indicated that the summit seeks to unlock the value that is inherent in the female economy for women to take their rightful place as equal partners in meeting the development challenges of Africa.
Graça Machel goes on to say “…If we talk about Africa, how many women are involved in financial matters? There are few women who occupy the place of power financially. When we come to social stability, feeding the nation and the likes, women are preferred to be at the forefront but when it comes to lending a voice financially, there is a gap. So, for us, we saw it as a good opportunity for women to take centre stage in the financial sector and gradually take centre stage in ruler ship of our various countries.”
The organization recognizes that women have the potential to deliver a significant contribution to economic growth in Africa. NFNV is an advocate for investment so that this potential can be reached. Their key focus is on increasing women’s access to finance and financial services, improving women’s skills as entrepreneurs and business leaders with the end goal being to increase the number of African women in leadership and decision-making positions.
For more information on the conference go to the following links
www.nfnv.org or www.businessdayonline.com