Women fund targets more in plan to turn into bank

The Women Enterprise Fund will be transformed into a bank to enable it to reach as many people as possible throughout the country.

Chief executive officer Samuel Wainaina Tuesday said the fund needed to start generating its own resources and not entirely rely on government funding to ensure it became sustainable.

“The way to do that is by getting into this public-private sector partnership and transform into a bank so that we can reach women all over the country,” Mr Wainaina said.

He was speaking in Murang’a.

He regretted that women groups from Central were lagging behind compared to other provinces in applying for money from the fund.

“If you compare with provinces like Nyanza, some groups are on their third loan, while in Central, only a few groups had managed to get the second loans. Some constituencies have not even exhausted the first Sh1 million,” he said.

Mr Wainaina gave examples of constituencies like Turkana South, Eldoret North and South, saying they had already exhausted their Sh2 million.

To get access

The Gender ministry is working with the Provincial Administration to make it easy for women to get access to funds application forms at the grassroots level.

So far, Sh894 million has been disbursed by the fund to more than 144,120 women’s groups countrywide to either boost or start businesses.
In addition to financial assistance, the fund is working on modalities on how to support capacity building.