"Women work incredibly hard, yet too many of their businesses remain at subsistence level," says Gisèle Yitamben. "If we want real change, we must finance what women do."
That conviction has shaped her life's work. When she finished university, Gisèle began as a lecturer and researcher, studying women's access to credit. The data, and the field visits behind it, revealed a pattern she could not ignore. Women were running farms, shops and services that kept households and communities going, but because their work did not fit the "cash crop" or formal business profile, they were shut out of conventional finance. "Finance is the engine that moves everything," she reflects. "So I decided that is where I would put my head and my hands."
Today, as Country Director of New Faces New Voices (NFNV) Cameroon, part of the Graça Machel Trust network, and founder of the Association for the Support of Women Entrepreneurs (ASAFE), Gisèle has turned that insight into a steady stream of practical solutions. Early in the NFNV journey, she and a group of about 80 women leaders began by organising themselves: saving together, testing joint ventures and even buying land to experiment with productive projects like fish farming. When outside funding was slow to materialise, numbers dropped, but a committed core remained. "We stayed focused on one goal," she says. "Unlocking women's access to finance."
As the financial world shifted towards digital tools, Gisèle refused to be left behind. In her sixties, she went back to university to study digital finance and now leads a regional community of practice. This decision has allowed her to reimagine access to capital in ways that work for informal traders and micro-entrepreneurs.
One of her first innovations was a computer and network training academy for women and young people, giving them basic digital literacy. From there, she and her team began designing tools that spoke directly to the realities of women's businesses.
They created a mobile inventory tool that replaces piles of handwritten notes with real-time stock records on a phone. Many of the women in her network had never kept systematic records, which made banks view them as "too risky". The new tool changes the conversation. With support from what Gisèle affectionately calls an "army of digitalisation" - young women students and graduates who visit shops, train entrepreneurs and troubleshoot issues - business owners can now show clear stock-in and stock-out records and basic sales summaries. "Your inventory should live in your hand, not in piles of paper," she tells them.
The model is deliberately circular. Entrepreneurs get better control of their businesses and a path to being recognised as bankable. The young women who train them earn income and build careers as tech enablers, developers and problem-solvers. "The energy and talent of young women give me hope," Gisèle says. "We are nurturing builders, not just users."
During the COVID-19 pandemic, when cash dried up and trade slowed, Gisèle and a small team of young engineers went further and designed Abia, a community currency that runs over mobile phones. Members could pay part of a transaction in cash and the rest in Abia, then spend those Abia with other businesses in the network. For Gisèle, the logic was simple: "Economic development is about exchange. How do you keep trading when cash is scarce?" Abia became a bridge, keeping commerce moving, stretching scarce cash and strengthening ties among local businesses.
What shines through in every part of her story is a clear philosophy: solutions must grow from women lived realities and create value in more than one direction. Tools like the inventory app and Abia do not just digitise existing practices; they shift who is seen, who is trusted and who gets to participate in the formal economy.
Gisèle is quick to emphasise that she does not work alone. She treasures the Graça Machel Trust network for the way it connects women across borders. "The GMT network is powerful," she says. "You meet women you would never meet at home. You learn, share and open doors for each other." Events like the Women Creating Wealth Entrepreneurs Summit, with its mix of learning, joy and practical showcases, reinforce her belief that when women's innovation is visible, it attracts partners and resources that can take local ideas to scale.
Her advice to young people is as direct as her approach to finance: "Be curious. We cannot afford short attention spans on a continent so rich, yet still so poor. Use that reality to fuel your determination to build solutions."
In every initiative she leads, from digital academies to community currencies, Gisèle is quietly rewriting the code of finance so that it recognises women as the economic actors they already are. "When women can access and shape the engine of finance," she says, "families, communities and whole economies move with them."
