Opportunities for Insights and Collaboration as 2X Global Summit 2024 Convenes Gender-Smart Investors in Nairobi

Bringing gender-smart asset owners and capital providers to the African continent, can prove particularly beneficial, providing them with unique opportunities for up-close and first-person insights that can better inform their work.

Andia Chakava, independent board member of 2X Global, expressed this while speaking about the 2X Global Summit 2024, the annual members’ meeting of 2X Global, the international gender finance membership network and field-building organisation.

This year’s edition, the first to be held on the African continent, brought over 250 leaders and stakeholders from the world’s largest development finance institutions, pension funds, family offices, foundations, philanthropy and donor agencies, investment banks and other partners, to Nairobi this week.

“We spend a lot of time talking about how we can have capital flow to women, and we want to see women invested in as entrepreneurs, but when you bring it home to Africa, you are faced with realities,” said Chakava, who is also the Investment Director at the Graça Machel Trust.

“How do I include women in the informal economy? How am I going to bring in more women operating in the rural economy? ‘What am I going to do about youth?

And having investors converge and having them listen to local entrepreneurs talk about their challenges… to me … it makes the global asset owners who normally fund intermediaries and are used to dealing with capital providers, now get closer to the actual people that we’re here to serve,” said Chakava.

Dr Dorothy Nyambi, President and CEO of 2024 co-host MEDA (Mennonite Economic Development Associates), also pointed to the opportunities in bringing together hundreds of gender lens investors and spoke about the change that it can spark.

“We see convenings like these as part of what contributes to ecosystem change and MEDA is about changing systems,” said Dr Nyambi, speaking on the sidelines of the Summit. She added:

“Being part of the 2X Global Summit allows us to meet like-minded organisations – partners, entrepreneurs, fund managers, asset managers, family foundations. How do we all come together so that the work we do helps to bring a coordinated response to what is needed versus a fragmented approach?

For us it is also about the opportunity for partnerships and the opportunity to continue to build those relationships that will help really move the needle so that three, five years from now, gender lens investing is not really a thing, it’s part of the mainstream.”

The 2X Global Summit 204 began on Monday September 16th and ended on Wednesday, September 18th.