Supporting businesswomen in Tanzania and Mozambique

Supporting businesswomen in Tanzania and Mozambique

Since 2016, we have built on the success of our M-Pesa money transfer and M-Pawa money saving services. We are a partner in Business Women Connect (BWC), a service specifically designed for women who run micro-businesses. Created in partnership with the ExxonMobil Foundation, World Bank and Centre for Global Development, BWC enables women to save and access useful business skills training, delivered by the NGO TechnoServe.

Since its launch, nearly 6,000 Tanzanian women have benefited from BWC’s business skills training and learned how to use M-Pawa. The World Bank has analysed the results, which show that women who are introduced to M-Pawa and have business skills training are statistically more likely to move their savings into their phones and improve their business practices.

Building on this success, we supported a pilot involving 500 businesswomen in Mozambique in 2017. After the training, women’s savings by phone increased from 56% to 93%, and the number keeping business records increased from 25% to 60%. The pilot also found a high use of phones among urban businesswomen and a growing interest in mobile payments.

Over the coming year, TechnoServe and Vodacom plan to explore a new partnership in Mozambique to support female agents who run kiosks where M-Pesa customers can deposit and withdraw money. One of the main objectives will be to provide financial literacy, business and agent skills so that more women can become successful entrepreneurs.