JEDDAH — With the aim to discuss how the Islamic Corporation for the Development of the Private Sector (ICD) and Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi) can expand their relationship and integrate the gender themes into ICD’s operations and businesses, a meeting was held between Ayman Amin Sejiny (CEO of ICD), Ms. Wendy Teleki (Head of We-Fi secretariat), and Samir Suleymanov (Director Strategic Initiatives, World Bank) at ICD’s premises in Jeddah on Sept.14, 2019. The parties discussed the development and promotion of women’s entrepreneurship through innovative sustainable solutions to increase women’s access to economic opportunities in developing countries.

Ms. Teleki highlighted the main objectives of We-Fi which is to support women entrepreneurs around the world through programs that provide financing, capacity building and also promote enabling environments that allow women to become entrepreneurs and grow their businesses. The We-Fi work using an ecosystem approach to develop programs at country level that will break down barriers and create more opportunities for women.

Ayman said “ICD and We-Fi are working together to enhance their initiatives and mandates in supporting the female society in all ICD’s member countries. We want to ensure that our lines of finance and our relationship with the 102 directly connected financial institutions we are dealing with will further enhance the funding, training to women entrepreneurs and to provide the required necessary support to women in all our member countries.”

Ms. Teleki added that We-Fi has six Implementing Partners (IP) and the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) is one of them. “IsDB, along with ICD is supporting women entrepreneurs in fragile countries. In Yemen, they have a very interesting ongoing program named BRAVE Women. They target to train up to 500 women to learn to develop business plans in fragile and high-risk contexts and up to 400 of them will get access to funding on a matching grant basis. This program aims also to develop the relationship between those women entrepreneurs with the local banks and also lead companies to make sure those women have access to finance and markets to grow their businesses. Moreover, the IsDB and ICD will be implementing soon this BRAVE Women program in two other countries to improve the women’s entrepreneurship potential in key economic sectors and we look forward to seeing those programs happening in future” she said.

We-Fi is a global platform which seeks to support over a hundred thousand women around the world in the next five years and mobilize at least $2 billion from the public and private sector for further activities.

The BRAVE WOMEN is a multi-country program aims to enhance the resilience of MSMEs owned/managed by women in fragile context as potential engines for innovation, employment, and improved quality of life. The Program will promote female owned/ led Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) to increase their opportunities for business growth through facilitation of direct and indirect investments, as well as improve their entrepreneurial ecosystem and business formation and growth through business resiliency capacity building, support to market development, a matching grant facility and business coaching support. — SG