Category Archives: Women Funding

Equity Bank’s War Chest

Equity Bank has been on a tear, signing deals with other banks for affordable lines of credit for on-lending. The latest ones are with the African Development Bank and FMO.

The recent financing agreements include:

In 2020:

  • September 2020: $50 million (Kshs 5.5 Billion) loan facility with the IFC.
  • October 2020: $100 Million from Proparco (Agence Française de Développement Group) to enable Kenya MSMEs, women entrepreneurs who had been particularly affected by the economic shock of the COVID-19 crisis to create jobs. It is expected to impact 240 MSMEs firms which will create over 5,000 direct and indirect jobs.

In 2021:

  • March 4: EUR 125 million (Kshs 16.5 Billion) loan facility signed with the European Investment Bank. The long-term loan will support Equity customer to sustain and scale their operations, with Kshs 6.5 billion to agriculture and Kshs 10 billion to MSMEs.
  • March 10: $100 Million (Kshs 11 Billion) facility with DEG of Germany, CDC Group of the United Kingdom, and FMO of the Netherlands to support MSMEs cope with COVID-19 over three years.
  • March 15: USD 75 Million (Kshs 8.25 Billion) loan facility with the African Guaranty Fund to lend to women-owned and managed micro, small and medium-sized enterprises in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and DRC.
  • March 23: $10 billion (Kshs 11 billion) from the African Development Bank to support its expansion into Central Africa. The  tier-two facility with a 7-year maturity is also to support lending to women and youth entrepreneurs access capital to recover and thrive in a post-COVID environment.
  • March 25: $50 million (KShs 5.5 billion) NASIRA loan portfolio guarantee from Netherlands FMO, covering loans provided to MSMEs affected by the COVID-19 crisis, including women and young entrepreneurs and companies in the agri-value chain.

Coca-Cola partners for business recovery in Kenya

Coca-Cola has launched a program to assist traders to quickly recover, and safely reopen their businesses, following months of disruption from Covid-19.

The company will avail Kshs 125 million as part of a Coca-Cola system small business recovery campaign to assist 18,000 businesses, along with its partners including Absa Bank Kenya, Amref Health Africa and the Women Enterprise Fund. This will be through initiatives such as loans, personal protective equipment, sanitation facilities, soda cases, gardening furniture (for outdoor dining) and training to help them reopen safely between October 2020 and March 2021.

Coca-Cola has 300,000 traders in the country, and through its data, has noted the disruptions on these small businesses, 40% of which are at risk of closure even after the government relaxed lockdown restrictions in September 2020. This is partly from expired stocks and slow sales pick up in places like downtown Nairobi.

Absa will provide unsecured business loans of up to Kshs 10 million, for working capital, and up to Kshs 50 million for Local Purchase order (LPO) and inventory discounting. As the financing business partner in this campaign, the bank, through trade data, is quickly able to score the business creditworthiness, and extend financing, to suppliers and retailers in the Coca-Cola ecosystem, without having to scour their financial statements.

Coca-Cola has also extended a grant of $175,000 (~Kshs 20 million) to Amref to support 4,000 micro-outlets, such as eateries and leisure places, in Laikipia, Nairobi and Mombasa counties, to carry out occupational safety changes & training and reopen safely in their communities. Also, for participating businesses in Laikipia, the County Government has offered further support to traders there through credits to offset some business loans as part of a Kshs 123 million Laikipia economic stimulus package.

10 Points from AfDB 2019 in Malabo

The African Development Bank (AfDB) Group held their 2019 series of annual meetings from 11 to 14 June in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea with the theme of “Regional Integration”

Highlights of the meetings:

1. Fast growth is not Enough: A key theme of the week was that the stellar growth levels in Africa (over 4%) were still not enough to create enough jobs and produce sufficient food on the continent.

2. High 5’s:  Regional Integration is one of the development priority themes (‘ High 5s’) that the Bank had adopted at its 2016 meetings in Lusaka, Zambia alongside (to) “Light up and power Africa”, “Feed Africa”, “Industrialise Africa”, and “Improve the quality of life of the people of Africa.”

3. It is Capital Raising time for the Bank and is organs. There are advanced talks towards a 7th general capital increase, the first since 2010, for the African Development Bank, which will be concluded in September.

A few months ago, Canada provided temporary callable capital of up to $1.1 billion to stabilize the AAA rating of the Bank.

There are also ongoing negotiations for a 15th replenishment of the African Development Fund.

4. Visa Index: The Bank’s Africa Visa Openness Index ranks how accessible African countries are to visitors from within the continent in terms of requiring travel visas and tracks developments by different countries to improve the ease of travel for fellow African citizens.

5. Low intra-Africa trade:  Ahead of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) which comes into force in July 2019, the potential economic benefits of full implementation were highlighted, with the greatest beneficiaries of the increased trade likely to be countries in the Central Africa region.

Africa has 54 countries; Alone they are not very competitive, but together, under the Continental Free Trade Agreement, they are a market of $3.4 trillion

 

Also see the regional economic outlook reports by the Bank.

6. Debt levels in Africa: There was some discussion about the levels and types of debt across Africa and their potential burden versus the growth and infrastructure needs of individual countries. Also the Bank affirmed its support to help countries negotiate better financing terms, get better deals for extractive resources, minimize currency risks, and to enable them to mobilize their own resources domestically.

7. Asia-models for Africa: At the AfDBAM2019, Korea and India showcased their partnerships with the Bank including on agricultural transformation, enhancing food security and scaling financing across Africa.

8. Different forms of development finance by the Bank: 

  • Toward Financial Inclusion

  • Integration of Africa

  • The Environment

  • Food Security

  • Disaster Relief

  • Clean Energy

  • They also have plans for an affirmative action finance facility for women in Africa (AFAWA).

9. Transformational Infrastructure Projects funded by the bank include ports, highways, bridges and border-crossing stations across different countries.

10. Malabo Image: Host nation, Equatorial Guinea, used the forum to shed an image about the country that is full of old stereotypes to one of economic diversification, transformation and infrastructure. President Obiang attended the opening of the AfDBAM2019 which were chaired by the country’s Minister of Finance, Cesar Abogo, who is just 39 years old.

(a) Parallel events during AfDBAM2019: 

  • Africa Investment Forum last year which at its inaugural AIF forum in 2018 in Johannesburg secured  $38 billion of investments for 40 projects across Africa.

  • African Banker Awards

(b) Next meeting: Following these first-ever meetings to take place in Central Africa, the next annual meetings of the bank will be in a year’s time in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire – the bank’s headquarter city, where they the election of the Bank President will be the main agenda item.

Barclays Kenya expands Enterprise Supply Development (ESD) programme

Barclays Kenya has announced an expansion of the support initiatives and resources available to small and medium enterprises (SME’s) through their Enterprise Supply Development (ESD) programme in Nairobi today.

Karen Kiambi, the Head of ESD Programme, said that while banks in the Barclays Africa group are all rebranding to Absa by 2020, Barclays Kenya was well on that path and it was using the rebrand to launch products like Timiza. She added that it had been the first Absa member, out of South Africa, to launch the ESD programme for SME’s.

She said SME’s were vital to the economic growth of countries and yet they continued to face challenges access financing especially in low-income countries, but that in the early phase of the ESD programme, Barclays had managed to avail unsecured financing to SME’s who supply goods and services to corporates such as Allpack, EABL, Kenya Wine Agencies, Unilever, Nairobi Hospital, and Gertrude’s Hospital. She said they now aimed to add more resources and reduce the processing time for financing requests by having an online web page for loan applications.

James Agin, the Barclays Director for Corporate Banking, said the ESD had three principles of easy access to finance, enterprise development and access to markets. Besides training in the ESD entrepreneurs, can also join the Barclays Business Club and from next year, the SME’s with high scores will have a higher profile to market themselves to other corporations. The event featured Barclays staff and guests including Peter Mungai (Head of Tax at Barclays), David Logongo (Procurement Manager, Kenya Revenue Authority) and Francis Murabula (Head of Supply Chain Management, Safaricom).

A statement released after the event indicated that SME’s seeking LPO financing and invoice-discounting through the programme would only need to have six months of bank account history and a supply contract, and that there would be no requirement to provide audited accounts.

FSD Kenya Insights on Youth and Agri Finance

FSD Kenya, which aims to create value through financial inclusion, have just released their 2017 Annual Report which contains findings from ongoing research projects around Kenya.  

Some excerpts 

  • The unregulated digital credit space in Kenya, mainly phone loans, has overtaken other forms of credit in the country with 19% paying digital loans, much more than 17% repaying family/friends or 14% paying shopkeepers for goods taken on credit. 
  • 45% of borrowers through mobile phones are now female. Usage has shifted from day-to-day to investing in businesses, but 14% (900,000 individuals) are juggling multiple loans, and half have defaulted or delayed loan repayment.
  • Tweaking Agri-Finance: There is lack of access to credit for agriculture which receives just 4% of banking credit. This could be partly due to lack of data so they are partnering with M-Kopa Labs to research other models. Hall of M-Kopa customers make money from agriculture and buy solar products so the research aims to see of if the pay-as-you-go model can be applied to other products like farm inputs, water tanks, fertilizer, animal feed etc.
  • Youth Finance products: 40% of the population is under 15 years but youth are underserved by the banking sector. They see money as a means of survival and savings as being for buying something not long-term or unanticipated needs. There is a lack of appropriate financial products for the youth, and this could be because older adults are the ones developing financial solution for the youth. One outcome of this research, funded by SIDA and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation could be a new class of lending to the youth, a development by FSD Kenya and the Kenya Bankers Association. 

  • They are also involved in the Kenya Hunger Safety Net program in which the government transfers Kshs 20 billion ($200 million) a year to people over 70 years.
  • Visiting economist John Kay gave a lecture where he advised that Kenya should develop local financial solutions and not adopt western financial models.
  • Smartphone uptake is still low, but USSD is how Kenyans can access robust banking services with cheap handsets.