‘Women key to national development’
WOMEN’S participation in economic development remains key to the achievement of national goals, Minister of Women Affairs, Community, Small and Medium Enterprise Development Monica Mutsvangwa told a National Defence Course yesterday.
She was presenting a case for the participation of women in economic development to the course at the Zimbabwe National Defence University, noting Government was working with stakeholders to ensure the full participation of women in national development.
“To put matters into context, women’s economic empowerment has been recognised as key to achieving development, particularly the 2030 Agenda for the Sustainable Development Goals, our Vision 2030 and NDS 1 goals,” she said.
“To achieve these goals, in particular those relating to SDG 5 which speaks on gender equality and women empowerment and Vision 2030, the Government of Zimbabwe is working with representatives of civil society, academic institutions and the private sector.
“In short, the advancement of women’s economic contribution to national development has a compound effect on the overall development of countries across the world. Conversely, the underdevelopment of countries is in large part a by-product of the neglected role of women in the economic sphere.”
In recent years there had been efforts to address these challenges being faced by women, which had seen the Government introducing initiatives to solve the problem.
“The Government has introduced initiatives such as the Women’s Empowerment Fund and the Women’s Bank to provide financial support to women entrepreneurs,” said Minister Mutsvangwa.
“Non-governmental organisations have also been working to provide training and support to women in economic sectors.”
Overall, the history of women’s participation in economic development in Zimbabwe had been marked by both progress and challenges.
While there had been significant strides in promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment, there was still much work to be done to create an enabling environment for women to thrive in the economy.
Zimbabwe was implementing programmes to mainstream women in the key economic sectors.
To facilitate financial inclusion for women, the Government had established and operationalised the Zimbabwe Women Micro Finance Bank.
The bank, Minister Mutsvangwa said, was benefiting women, including those in rural areas through the provision of financial assistance at low-interest rates and flexible collateral terms, which included household assets, goats and cows, the collateral most ordinary women had.
Further, the Women Development Fund was established to provide loans to women’s projects at an interest rate of 10 percent a year which had seen over 20 000 women benefiting.
The Zimbabwe Community Development Fund was also set to provide technical and financial support to community projects in sectors such as agriculture and value addition. The Government, through the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, had also launched the Financial Inclusion Strategy 2 intending to improve access to credit by disadvantaged entrepreneurs, including women.
Through this strategy, the Reserve
Bank of Zimbabwe had established a collateral registry for movable assets to expand the range of qualifying collateral accepted by lenders.
As such women in business were taking advantage of this window to acquire necessary business finance.
Mining, said Minister Mutsvangwa, was one of the fastest growing sectors in Zimbabwe which had seen legislative and policy reforms that had led to the opening up of the sector, allowing the entry of women small-scale miners.
Women in Zimbabwe also played a pivotal role in economic development through the manufacturing of products such as clothing, leather products, furniture and baskets among others.
They contributed economically through all sectors’ value chains.