Ghana’s Gender Minister told Accra’s 3i Africa Summit on Saturday that the planned Women’s Development Bank will deploy fintech to reach women excluded from formal credit.
Dr. Agnes Naa Momo Lartey, Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection, said the institution will use mobile money, digital savings tools, and interoperable payment systems to serve women-owned micro enterprises that traditional collateral requirements have long shut out of the formal banking system.
Her remarks arrive as momentum builds behind a bank already backed by serious public money. Finance Minister Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson allocated GH₵401 million to the Women’s Development Bank (WDB) in Ghana’s 2026 national budget, stacking onto a GH₵51.3 million seed fund committed in 2025, with lending targeted across all 16 regions once the institution becomes fully operational.
Dr. Lartey told summit delegates that women dominate informal trade, agriculture, and small and medium enterprises (SMEs), yet structural barriers continue to limit their reach into digital marketplaces beyond their immediate communities. The WDB, she said, is specifically designed to close that gap by offering tailored credit products, reducing collateral dependency, and pairing financial access with business development support.
She referenced the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme as proof that policy-backed support produces measurable shifts in women’s economic standing, noting that many female-headed beneficiary households are already moving toward financial independence. The WDB, she argued, represents the next logical stage of that transition.
The minister grounded the bank’s ambitions in existing legislative architecture, pointing to the National Gender Policy and the Affirmative Action Act as frameworks designed to mainstream women’s participation in leadership, governance, and economic decision-making.
She commended the Bank of Ghana and Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems (GHIPSS) for driving conversations around innovation and financial inclusion that create the infrastructure the WDB will rely on.
“When women thrive, Africa thrives,” she said, framing the institution not as a conventional lender but as a development instrument intended to fundamentally reshape women’s economic participation across the continent.
