Tomorrow is Women’s Day in South Africa and this entire a month a number of initiatives have been announced at addressing imbalances in the workplace and assisting where possible. In the world of fund managers, Visa has confirmed that it will be providing a grant towards the African Women Impact Fund (AWIF).

This grant is being provided in a collaboration between Standard Bank and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA).

Visa explains that it will be utilised to fund the working capital needs of women fund managers across South, East and West Africa, targeting 55 women who responded to AWIF’s call to action and have been part of their programme since 2020.

“Visa’s grant to the AWIF is an extension of the She’s Next program, a global advocacy program for women-owned businesses that has been expanded to Sub-Saharan Africa to further champion and strengthen African women business owners as they build, sustain, and advance their businesses,” the company noted in a press release sent to Hypertext.

“The aim of She’s Next to help women owned businesses thrive and our ambition with this grant is to enable access in a space where women owned firms are under-represented. Through this programme we aim to ensure that women are not only recipients but become decision-makers where institutional funding for businesses is concerned,” added Aida Diarra, SVP and head of Sub-Saharan Africa at Visa.

The company further explained that the funding will be directed towards activities that assist the business owners with improving their technical skillsets, becoming investible to larger institutional investors and to run profitable businesses that in turn invest in others including SMBs and SMEs.

“The funding will ensure that these business owners are able to focus on growing their enterprises without the burden of managing short-term debt and other operational costs related to building a successful business,” concluded Diarra.