Gender Finance: Empowering women through investment

Tosin Akinmusire is a mother with a career as a regional operations manager in the Nigeria-based food retailing company Food Concepts Plc. Her employer launched a gender action plan with the help of their investor, the private equity fund DPI, two years ago. Applying the 2X Challenge Women for Finance criteria, DPI is helping its portfolio companies in Sub-Saharan Africa to integrate gender lens into their internal policies.

The EIB is an investor in DPI’s African Development Partners III fund, the first-ever 2X Flagship fund committed to support women’s economic empowerment and promote gender equality.

Women are often excluded from financial markets and are limited in their economic and social potential. The “2X Challenge”, committed to address these issues by investing 3 billion dollars in projects and companies that improve women’s access to leadership positions, offer women quality employment and provide specific products or services that empower women. Its exceeded its target just two years after its launch with a total $4.5 billion mobilised for gender-smart investments. 

The EIB became the first multilateral development bank to endorse and use the 2X Criteria in October 2019.

Read more on our Press Release and learn more about how we invest in gender equality and women’s economic empowerment

The 2X Challenge is a multilateral initiative launched during the G7 Charlevoix Summit in June 2018 with the ambitious objective of deploying and mobilising unprecedented amounts of capital to support projects that empower women as entrepreneurs, as business leaders, as employees and as consumers of products and services that enhance their economic participation.

Patience Ahiadorme is a mother of six and Sales Force Manager for the off-grid solar company PEG in Asesewa, Ghana. Her day-to-day routine juggling with home chores and her job is possible thanks to PEG’s pioneering gender policies, where the company has attracted gender-conscious investment, and through the climate fund operated by the asset manager responsAbility.

The private debt fund addresses the lack of access to clean power primarily in Sub-Saharan Africa and South and South-East Asia and qualifies for the 2X Challenge, a leading initiative deploying and mobilising capital to empower women and enhance their economic participation in emerging markets. As the first adopter of the 2X Challenge, the EIB is committed to promote gender-conscious climate investments and supports responsAbility's Climate Fund.