Mombasa,KENYA:The Gulf of Africa bank has partnered with UN women to train women entrepreneurs all over the country on procurement and how to secure tenders.
With the training having kicked off on Wednesday, over 230 women in business are expected to receive skills on tendering, business finance and banking relationships.
Abdalla Abdulkhalik the Managing director at the Gulf of Africa Bank says they decided to partner with UN Women after they realized that 43% of the women running SME’s lacked formal banking relationships.
Abdulkhalik added that as a way of encouraging their customers to get into entrepreneurship, the bank would ensure that at-least 20% of its suppliers were its customers.
“We as a bank also have a procurement department and we have ensure 20% of our supplies are from our customers.”Abdulkhalik said.
The training was also attended by other stakeholders in including the deputy director at UN Women and Uwezo fund officials.
Karin Feug the Deputy director at UN Women who was one of the speakers, urged the community to embrace gender equality so as to encourage women to engage in entrepreneurship.
“For women to grow we must stop discrimination on gender based activities.”Feug said.
The training is expected end on Thursday in Mombasa, with several of such training activities slated to take place all over the country.
