From Baobab Consulting. In this edition of Baobab Consulting’s LinkedIn white paper, Omolara "Lara" Abiona investigates why African female entrepreneurs find it hard to access financing, sheds light on the complex relational dynamics that further impedes economic empowerment, and presents recommendations to address the access to finance gap on various level.

From Power Africa. Women represent half of the world’s employment potential, yet they make up only 32 percent of the renewable energy sector workforce worldwide. In Africa’s off-grid energy sector, this discrepancy is especially acute, and problematic, as companies race to meet the workforce needs of a rapidly growing sector. PEG Africa (PEG) is a fast-growing, 400+ person company that provides solar-powered electricity solutions, called solar home systems (SHS), to customers in rural and remote parts of West Africa where the electricity grid does not reach. Small off-grid companies in Africa, such as PEG, must tackle an array of business-related challenges, and gender equality and women’s empowerment are not often prioritized. However, integrating gender-inclusive practices can both benefit business performance and increase social impact. Power Africa supports projects, programs and policies that strive to reduce gender inequalities and promote the effective engagement of both men and women in the energy sector. As part of its ongoing businessrelated support to PEG, Power Africa identified the opportunity to help the company implement strategic measures to increase internal gender equality and strengthen women’s economic opportunities.

Gender lens investing (GLI) is based on the premise that investing in companies that promote gender equality through their internal policies or through their business activities is not only morally responsible but can lead to higher financial returns. To date, the majority of GLI in Sub-Saharan Africa has been carried out through dedicated investment vehicles such as Alitheia, a Nigerian private equity fund which uses a gender lens approach, or initiatives such as the IFC’s Banking on Women (in conjunction with Goldman Sachs’ 10,000 Women). Now, a number of development finance institutions (DFIs), development agencies and investor groups are looking to expand the footprint of GLI, popularise gender considerations in investing and provide greater clarity about GLI.

Gender bonds, as a recent development in both the themed bond space and in the GLI space, are still relatively poorly defined, beyond being bonds that support the advancement, empowerment and equality of women. No official or universal definition exists. Like other themed bonds, gender bonds can be issued as senior unsecured notes referencing the balance sheet of the issuer, where proceeds are ringfenced for specific use on eligible ‘gender’ activities, or as securitisations referencing a pool of assets directly (e.g. issued off balance sheet by an SPV into which a portfolio of eligible loans are placed).

From Criterion Institute. Impact investors who want to promote women’s economic empowerment must address gender-based violence as part of their strategies, given how high rates of violence are in Kenya. Impact investors have the power to address both violence and broader economic empowerment by incorporating a gender-based violence lens in screening, structuring, and analyzing investments. The coordination of their efforts will enable finance to reduce gender-based violence in Kenya.

From the World Bank Group’s Africa Gender Innovation Lab and the Finance, Competitiveness and Innovation Global Practice. This report seeks to focus attention on the challenges that Africa’s women entrepreneurs face and identify practical solutions.

From Value for Women. This How-To Guide makes an important contribution to our industry work by providing practical tools and resources for an investing community that urgently needs to address its diversity and inclusion deficits. Globally, awareness of gender lens investing continues to gain momentum, but we must convert this awareness to action and movement of capital, especially during this period of COVID-19 response and recovery. Thus, how fund managers invest is just as important as what they invest in. This perspective not only demands a technical approach (gender analysis, tools, and frameworks), but also broader organizational re-alignment (gender mainstreaming). This internal process is an essential part of creating external change and outcomes that advance gender equality.

From Oxfam. Across Africa, ambitions to achieve inclusive and sustainable development are being undermined by inadequate investment in the care economy. Women and girls are providing millions of hours of unpaid care and domestic work (UCDW) – a provision which props up the economy and underpins society, yet remains under-recognized, undervalued and under-invested in.

While inattention to care policy and the unequal distribution of UCDW has stalled gender equality in every country globally, this brief focuses on the specific barriers that UCDW creates for sustainable development in Africa. It explains how investing in quality, accessible and affordable public services and infrastructure in Africa can address heavy and unequal UCDW and unlock progress across multiple Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The brief draws on research and programming experience from Oxfam’s Women’s Economic Empowerment and Care (WE-Care) programme. Active since 2014, the programme addresses UCDW as a key driver of gender inequality and is implemented in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Zimbabwe and the Philippines. This paper draws on WE-Care initiatives in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe, and presents evidence-based solutions from these five countries to address UCDW across the continent.

From GrOW/McGill. This policy brief presents results of a CBA of the subsidized childcare project. Since information about the monetary value of benefits (mothers’ earnings and day care fees saved) is available only for the year that the project was executed, results pertain to the monetization of benefits for this period. Costs include day care fees, cash transfers and expenditures on training and material. Regarding benefits, they can be observed at the child level, the mother level and the sibling level. The monetization of benefits is generally challenging due to the limitations of available data. Thus, the authors provide a monetary value to benefits only in the case they are easily identifiable using data collected during the survey.

Key findings:

• Mothers who used subsidized childcare services experienced an increase in their earnings and free time.

• Attending day care may increase children’s future earnings and life expectancy.

• Subsidized childcare may increase school enrollment for older siblings.

• The benefits associated with providing subsidized early childcare outweigh the costs.

From GrOW/McGill. In this study, researchers tested whether access to affordable and improved-quality day care influenced women’s labor market engagement in Korogocho slum in Nairobi, through the evaluation of a randomized control trial (RCT) with three study arms. Mothers in two of the study arms were given vouchers for subsidized center- based ECC for one year. To examine whether the quality of child care centers affected women’s use of ECC services, about half of the day cares participating in the voucher program were randomly selected to receive additional provider training and materials such as mattresses, potties, toys, and hand-washing stations.

Key findings

• Mothers were eager to send their children to early child care centers.

• Mothers who received subsidized child care were 17% more likely to be employed than mothers who did not.

• Working mothers who received subsidized child care were able to work on average five fewer hours per week than those who did not, without any loss to their earnings.

• Subsidizing child care helped mothers to both find and maintain employment.

• Cost, more so than concerns over quality, is the main barrier to women accessing center-based child care.

From GrOW/McGill. This study takes an in-depth look at the strategies mothers in poor, urban African settings use to reconcile their responsibilities of child care and paid work. The results point to several main conclusions.

• Combining work and child care is difficult, if not impossible, without compromising productivity or the safety of children.

• Relying on family members to assist with child care is not a viable or preferable option for most working mothers.

• Centre-based child care is perceived as offering key advantages to mothers and their children.

• The main barrier to centre-based child care is user costs