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How UAE supports We-Fi to help women entrepreneurs
Gulf News
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2/12/2025
UAE helps Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi) to support female entrepreneurs in developing countries
Read the full article here: https://bit.ly/39Pmjkv
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Read more Gulf News stories here: https://bit.ly/2HLJ2km
#UAE #GWFD #GlobalWomensForum
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00:00
WIFI is a global program that focuses on supporting women entrepreneurs in emerging markets and
00:06
we have a broad array of governments that have provided funding for the program, 14,
00:11
one of which, one of the founding members was the United Arab Emirates.
00:16
And we work through six multilateral development banks to run programs that support women entrepreneurs
00:22
in these countries.
00:24
We now have about $250 million that we've allocated to programs around the world, including
00:31
the MENA region.
00:33
They both include access to finance programs, access to markets.
00:38
We also do a lot of work on the enabling environment and the legal and policy side of things.
00:43
We try to take an ecosystem approach to address the challenges that women face when they want
00:48
to become entrepreneurs.
00:50
We have 29 projects that have begun implementation.
00:55
Most of those are at the stage of working with partners.
00:57
We work through local partners.
00:59
That means we work with banks and other financial institutions like FinTechs and others.
01:04
We work with corporates to try to get them to procure more.
01:08
We work with regulators to try to get them to change laws.
01:12
So most of the programs right now are in the process of getting those institutions to design
01:17
their new products, design their new services to support women.
01:21
And a number of the programs are starting to train the women that are the beneficiaries
01:26
of those programs.
01:27
We're so excited to be here and very grateful for the government of the Arab Emirates and
01:33
the government of Dubai to be supporting the program here.
01:36
We've tried to make the agenda for the WEFI Summit really be focused on spurring action,
01:41
inspiring and engaging participants for the MENA region to try to drive more change in
01:47
this area for the MENA region.
01:49
We will also have a series of other workshops which are really designed to drive change
01:55
and to drive momentum going forward.
01:57
There will be workshops on women entrepreneurs in fragile states, which will be led by the
02:00
Islamic Development Bank.
02:03
Workshops on e-commerce and how women can get access to e-commerce.
02:08
Workshops on value chains, because we know that only 1% of corporate value, global value
02:13
chains are women-led companies that are participating in this.
02:20
We're talking about banking and how do you get banks to accelerate financing for women.
02:24
So we're covering a broad range of topics and the objective of the workshops is all
02:29
to spur action.
02:30
We're actually launching today with IFC a new program called ScaleX, which is meant
02:36
to expand the number of women who get funding at the conclusion of these accelerator programs.
02:42
So it's an incentive program that should work with a broad array of accelerators to help
02:49
them focus more on getting women to the end goal, which is getting them financing.
02:54
We only work in developing countries, so we're not doing projects, for example, in the United
02:58
Arab Emirates.
02:59
They're a donor country for us and we've been very grateful for that.
03:02
In the first round of allocations, the first and second round of allocations, we had a
03:06
few projects that were done in the MENA and there's obviously many projects happening
03:10
in Africa, Latin America, Asia, other places.
03:14
The Islamic Development Bank has kicked off their program with this initiative in Yemen,
03:18
which is quite an interesting program to support women in that conflict-affected state.
03:24
So we are really glad to see the work that they're doing directly with women that will
03:29
also get financing to those women after they've gone through a series of training.
03:33
So they'll be speaking here during the fragile states of breakout that we're having.
03:39
We also have an e-commerce program and they also have an announcement today.
03:43
They're going to be partnering with UPS to develop training programs for women to help
03:48
them get access to markets through e-commerce.
03:51
So that is a training program that works across the whole region to bring women up to the
03:57
level of being able to access more e-commerce.
04:01
And in addition, as part of that program, we've also been doing a lot of work and analytics
04:08
around the regulatory environment and how to make sure women are on a level playing
04:13
field.
04:14
As you know, this is a big challenge.
04:16
The MENA region has a lot of challenges, but there's been a great amount of momentum recently
04:22
in terms of legal changes, both in the UAE.
04:26
Saudi Arabia has had amazing changes this year, and then many other parts of the region
04:33
are doing well.
04:34
So that program, that's the World Bank program, where the UPS announcement is happening today,
04:40
will be also covering the regulatory side.
04:43
This year, as we request new calls for proposal from our implementing partners, the multilateral
04:49
development banks that we look at, we have identified three things that we really want
04:53
to focus on.
04:55
One is early stage financing.
04:58
So this whole ecosystem of accelerators, incubators, venture capital funds, how do we get more
05:03
women through the pipeline and successfully receiving financing?
05:07
We're looking at global value chains and international value chains.
05:11
So that might be fast-moving consumer goods, or it might be agricultural value chains.
05:16
We're trying to identify ways to get more women into value chains.
05:20
As I mentioned, only 1% of the suppliers into global value chains are women-led businesses,
05:25
so we really want to improve that.
05:27
And then we're also looking at technology and fintech.
05:30
So how do we get digital technologies to benefit more women entrepreneurs?
05:35
So that's a big focus for us this year.
05:37
I think it just shows that right now, this is a really important topic, and people understand
05:42
the importance of empowering women.
05:44
And we see it in the WEFI program is housed at the World Bank.
05:49
It's such a high priority for the World Bank.
05:52
But all of the implementing partners that we work with have really put it at the top
05:55
of their priority list.
05:57
I think in this region, even more so, the opportunity for spurring economic growth from
06:04
having more women engaged and participating in the workforce and empowered through entrepreneurship
06:10
is going to be critical for the next few years for growth and for creating better societies.
06:17
So we're really excited to see what's happening here.
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