Eric Ombok
18 July 2007
column
Johannesburg — Last October President Mwai Kibaki announced that 30 percent of all new hires in the public service would be women.
Then in May this year during the launch of his presidential campaign, Member of Parliament Raila Odinga pledged to raise this number to 50 percent should he be elected Kenya's fourth President during the December 2007 General Elections. Come June 2007, the wooing of women hit fever pitch when in the annual budget speech, Finance Minister, Amos Kimunya established a $30,008mn (Ksh2bn) Women Enterprise Fund. Kimunya then allocated $15,004mn (Ksh1bn) to start off the fund and challenged the private sector to top up the amount. Within a fortnight, the country's top two micro financiers, Equity Bank and Family Bank picked the gauntlet.
In Partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Equity Bank announced it had set aside $75,02mn (Ksh5bn) for lending to women over the next three years. The bank went further to announce the establishment of three branches to cater for women only clientele.
Soon after, Family Bank announced it had set aside $7,502mn (Ksh500mn) specifically for lending to women.
In quick succession some 'amorphous' and 'pedestrian' organization going by the name Maendeleo ya Wanaume (Society for the development of men) filed a lawsuit in the High Court against Kimunya for discriminating against 48 percent of Kenya's population by creating a fund for the country's women who comprise 52 percent of the population. The organization wants the fund reconstituted as the Family Fund.
The men's lobby group filed a constitutional reference alleging unconstitutionality of the establishment of the women's fund. The applicants through their officials claim that the fund if established will out rightly discriminate on basis of gender and age (in respect to youth fund) and further that the fund will cause disharmony within families. They have therefore prayed to the constitutional court to among other steps; declare the establishment of the fund unconstitutional and also to stop the government from disbursing such funds. In what was an eventful month, the Women's Agenda and Women's Organisations filed their case within days at the High Court.
And not to long ago, a friend walked into one of the branches of Standard Chartered Bank of Kenya to deposit a cheque. Stanchart, as the bank is popularly referred to in the country, launched a women only bank account, Diva Account, at the beginning of the year. The branch he walked into had a teller for Diva account holders only.
In the Kenya Reinsurance Company (Kenya (Re) Initial Public Offer (IPO) where the government begun selling 40 percent of its shareholding in the wholly state owned enterprise in mid July ahead of trading in the shares on the Nairobi Stock Exchange at the end of this month, the state fell short of reserving a percentage of the shares for women investors after creating reserves for insurance companies, institutional investors, Kenya Re staff and the general public.
On a serious note, when an economy is flourishing, the first signs of good tidings are seen in the financial sector and perhaps it is just a matter of time before we see the cousins of commercial banks, that is investment banks or stock brokers, insurance companies and fund managers in particular developing products to increase the participation of women in the economy.
For motor insurance in some countries, women pay lower premiums based on the argument that their risk profile is lower than that of their male counterparts. The same argument has been advanced by some bankers in Kenya who are yet to put their money where their mouths are - by charging lower interest rates for loans disbursed to their female clientele.
Now that commercial banks have been falling all over each other in recent months to launch bank accounts for children, it will not be surprising to see many more go the Diva Account way to accommodate more women customers as the first step in the economic empowerment of the Kenyan woman.
At this point one may want to pose and ponder on the possibility of significantly accelerating the rate of economic growth in the country by increasing the participation of women in the mainstream economy.
Whichever direction Kenya's new investment craze i.e. investing in women takes, it is a business idea whose time has come, and the necessary structures should be put in place to roll out the business plan expeditiously. It will be a pity if women, like the Kenyan youth did, have to wait for more than a year to recieve the first payemnt from the Youth Enterprise Fund that was established in June 2006.
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