On 21 November 2016, in Johannesburg South Africa, on its endeavour to document, publish and disseminate knowledge products on managing for development results based on experiences of different African countries, institutions, policy makers and managers, the African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF) talked to Mrs Zanele Mbeki on the experience and lessons of the Women Development Business Trust in achieving gender results in South Africa over the past 25 years
Mrs Mbeki, the gender leader, and former first lady of the second biggest economy in Africa, spoke of the progress, achievements, challenges, opportunities and lessons of WDB trust interventions in South Africa and beyond. She tells a story of the quest to advance gender equality, especially in accessing financial resources to fund women business. She calls on regional organizations such as the ACBF, African Union and African Development Bank to use their position of influence to establish sustainable African women investment development fund that will address gender inequalities and financing of women businesses.
Moreover, Mrs Mbeki emphases the needs for Africa to finance women development programmes through internal resources. She said the donor dependency is no longer reliable, therefore its high time African policy makers and managers device strategic partnerships with local business and enterprises as well as investors to raise locally, funds, to finance women development initiatives.
As an ordinary South African returning refugee, and a daughter of dress maker, from 1991, Mrs Mbeki has successful established and developed an African women institution for women economic development: the Women Development Business Trust which has been self-financing through its investment holding company (WDBIH). WDB is a women-owned and managed institution for socio-economic development, advancement and empowerment of South African women. It aims at giving them dignity and meaning through advocacy and thought leadership.
WDB Trust’s microfinance model replicates the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, which strongly believes that people in impoverished rural areas repay back their loans on time if you operate within their cultural context.
As WDB celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2016, the WDB’s rural development programmes have reached over 182,000 female rural entrepreneurs, benefiting over 913500 families, disbursed over R400-millions in soft loans, trained over 3000 women in basic business skills and computer literacy, supported over 9000 individuals to access basic public services from the impoverished states of South Africa, built a portfolio of over 3 billion Rand, recruited over 300 staff members and lifted a significant number of families from the lowest level of development ratio (LMS).
Moving forward, WBD is expecting to establish women microfinance bank in South Africa as well as a microfinance training academy in the coming years.
Speaking on the enabling environment for microfinance services in Africa and in South Africa in particular, Mrs Mbeki said the South Africa laws and policies like in many other African countries are supportive of traditional banking model and not the microfinances and microcredits. She therefore called for transformative changes, if women and people at the lower level of social economic structure are to develop and be able to do things for themselves.
The AfDB and ACBF provides support to the African Community of Practice on Managing for Development Results (AfCoP-MfDR) members to strengthen development processes in 18 countries and two regional economic communities. It partners with the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) and the Western African Monetary Union (WAEMU) to accelerate regional policy implementation through MfDR tools and principles.
The AfCoP-MfDR program is working with three thematic groups to support advancement of result culture in the continent namely the Gender for Results (G4R), Youth for Results (Y4R) and Natural Resources for Results (NR4R).
