Ecobank Uganda, part of the leading pan-African Ecobank Group has today launched its flagship Women’s Programme ‘Ellevate’ to empower and support women-led and/or women-focused businesses, with financial and value-added solutions that will help their businesses reach full potential and succeed.
Research shows that Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) account for about 90% of all businesses in Africa and women own about a third of all registered African SMEs. Indeed, one in four (25.9%) of adult women in Africa start or manage a business. However, women have not enjoyed equal access to high quality, demand-driven financial services and it is estimated that women-owned SMEs face a US$42 billion financing gap making lack of access to financing a common constraint to their business growth.
Commenting about the inevitability of Ellevate as a solution, Mrs. Annette Kihuguru, the Managing Director of Ecobank Uganda, said: “The growth of women-led and women-focused businesses have been long hampered by a range of impediments, including access to finance. We have specially designed Ellevate to meet the needs of women entrepreneurs through the provision of comprehensive, customized and tailormade solutions which include favourable lending rates, smart cash management enablement and a suite of value-added services such as leadership training, mentoring, and networking opportunities. Ecobank Commercial Bank is allocating a minimum of 10% of its loan portfolio to women’s businesses.”
“Women-led businesses are a largely underserved market and Ecobank Uganda is determined to help them reach their potential, grasp business opportunities and become both scalable and sustainable. This will enable them to play a major role in Africa’s social and economic development, in addition to creating hundreds of thousands of the jobs needed by this and future generations of Uganda’s citizens,” she added.
For further information about Ellevate, please visit www.ecobank.com/ellevate
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Ecobank Uganda was established in 2008. It is licensed and supervised by the Bank of Uganda. The Bank has its Head Office located at Plot 8A, Kafu Road, Kampala and has 11 branches, and serves numerous customers through its Consumer, Commercial and Corporate Banking divisions.
The Bank is owned by Ecobank Transnational Incorporated (ETI), the pan-African financial conglomerate headquartered in Lomé, Togo, which operates in 33 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Ecobank Group also has a banking license in France and representative offices in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; Johannesburg, South Africa; Beijing, China; London, the UK and Dubai, the United Arab Emirates.
The Group offers a full suite of banking products, services and solutions including bank and deposit accounts, loans, cash management, advisory, trade, securities, wealth and asset management. ETI is listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchanges in Lagos, the Ghana Stock Exchange in Accra, and the Bourse Régionale des Valeurs Mobilières in Abidjan. For further information please visit www.ecobank.com
