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E20 - Carolyne Kirabo, Founder and CEO of M-Kyala Ventures (Uganda)
82 Plays1 month ago
What does it mean to build a gender-smart investment fund in East Africa, and what makes it work? In this episode, Carolyne Kirabo, an investor based out of Uganda and the founder of M-Kyala Ventures, is transforming how capital flows to women-led businesses across East Africa. From funding a plastic recycling business to supporting a million-dollar eco-footwear brand, Carolyne shares what’s working and what’s not in inclusive finance. We dive into why many women don’t get funded, and why funders need to change how they show up. Carolyne talks about the gap between women’s repayment behavior (much better than some may think) and their access to capital, and how she’s bridging the gaps. If you’ve ever wondered how to move beyond good intentions to real outcomes in gender lens investing, this conversation is for you. And it’s a call for all of us to always start with listening deeply to women’s needs and experiences.
Please review the episode, share your feedback, and subscribe to the podcast!
You can also:
- Visit our website: womenchangingfinance.org
- Read Carolyne's full bio
- Follow Carolyne on LinkedIn
To go further, here are some of the references mentioned during the episode:
- Gender Action Collective https://mkyalaventures.com/service/convening-for-collective-impact/
- M-Kyala 5 Year Impact Report https://mkyalaventures.com/2025/10/16/m-kyala-impact-report-celebrating-five-years-of-walking-with-women-entrepreneurs/
- Gender Smart Lending Toolkit https://www.gslafrica.org/our-drivers
- Shona Group – https://shonacapital.co/
- FindingXY – https://findingxy.com/
- Helton Traders – https://heltontraders.com/
- Uzuri K&Y – https://www.uzuriky.com/
- Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) – https://www.andeglobal.org
- The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
Women Changing Finance is part of the Impact Alpha Podcast Network.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Women Changing Finance'
00:00:05
Speaker
Hi, welcome to the podcast Women Changing Finance, where you will discover amazing women from all around the world who are making finance become a force for good.
00:00:21
Speaker
Welcome to the podcast Women Changing Finance.
Introducing Caroline Kirabo and Amchala Ventures
00:00:24
Speaker
I'm Krisztina Tora and I'm welcoming today Carolyne Kirabo, founder and CEO of M-Kyala Ventures, an East Africa-based Pan-African investment advisory firm that focuses on unlocking capital for women and youth entrepreneurs.
00:00:39
Speaker
The firm specializes in sectors such as climate resilience, agriculture, and secular economies, spaces which are often underserved by traditional financing.
00:00:50
Speaker
I have known Carolyne for a very long time now and have always been so impressed by her work and her passion for impact. So welcome, Carolyne. Thank you for being on the show today.
Uganda's Impact Ecosystem
00:01:01
Speaker
As we begin, i would love to hear from you. If you could please paint a picture for the audience of the impact ecosystem in Uganda. What trends and evolutions are you witnessing? What is specific about the ecosystem in Uganda?
00:01:16
Speaker
Thank you for that question, Krisztina. It comes at a really important time in Mchala Ventures' growth as we're marking five years this month. And as you know, Mchala Ventures first started its operations in Uganda during COVID.
00:01:32
Speaker
And what really led to that was, as you've said, women are underserved, women entrepreneurs are are not normally identified as a strong opportunity for not only impact, but also financial returns. So if I go back and think about Uganda, I started out in the impact investing space in 2013, leading what was more or less the first impact investment fund in the region, and in the country to be specific. And no one really understood what impact investment was.
00:02:08
Speaker
right Everyone just knew, you know, you take money for your business, you do your work, you repay, you go home and fight to another day. the entrepreneurs were already creating impact. They just didn't know it.
00:02:21
Speaker
The impact space became for me more of an incentive for entrepreneurs to see themselves as not just trying to survive in a tough economy, but to see themselves as transformers of communities and transformers of livelihoods, enhancers or enablers of entire value chains.
00:02:45
Speaker
And impact investing then came in at a time that It was more or less saying that we'll give you capital, but we will also reward you because this capital is not just serving you as a business, but it's also going beyond the
Growth in Uganda's Startup Scene
00:03:03
Speaker
business. And so a lot of the work for Impact in the beginning was really building an ecosystem of that in a country where this didn't really make sense, right? So we did a lot of work with the very fast accelerators, incubators,
00:03:19
Speaker
ah training sessions, thinking about how is impact reporting going to work. This is probably before even the Irish standards were, rather known. Things have improved.
00:03:31
Speaker
It's still been a bit slow in Uganda, but there's been a lot of improvement. You're seeing more venture studios have come up. There is more of an established startup ecosystem. There's more ESOs in the market now. You know, I can name a few people like Shona, people like FindingXY.
00:03:53
Speaker
There's several players now in the market that are doing so much work to improve how entrepreneurs can not only access capital, right, but grow thriving businesses.
00:04:05
Speaker
There's also been a growing interest from international partners who did not look at these spaces
Gender Action Collective Plans
00:04:13
Speaker
in the past. So you'll see women programs being launched by GIZ or BMZ.
00:04:20
Speaker
Our former USAID had started to do a lot of work. And, you know, thinking of all the funds that I was able to lead in the country that promoted entrepreneurs.
00:04:32
Speaker
And so, yes, there is a lot of growth in the market, a lot of improvement. We still are a little bit behind on good data. And so that's something that at Emtala we are trying to make An attempt at changing. So one of the things that we want to launch next year is a gender action collective where we want to bring together all ah types of ESOs that focus on women plus women entrepreneurs into a sort of collective where we can.
00:05:06
Speaker
put together the impact results of the different projects that we've worked on, try to put together insights on what is the trends, what do women and entrepreneurs need, what are the questions they're asking.
00:05:20
Speaker
And the goal for us is to use this as a platform to create like meaningful programming, do a lot of advocacy on policy. And one of the things that was Inspirational for this is there was a recent World Bank project that put a significant amount of money into the Uganda ecosystem for women entrepreneurs that were supposed to be dispersed through your formal financial institution. sopan So much confusion about how this is working in the ecosystem meant a lot of us who work with women say,
00:05:55
Speaker
ah who did they speak to? Why weren't we on the decision tables? Why weren't we consulted on what could work? You know, why are we still doing such great work and not being brought into this very important conversations?
00:06:11
Speaker
And so we're hoping that as a collective, we can say more, we can do more, we can bring more data synthesized insights into the market so that If you, Krisztina, wanted to know, like, what is the state of financing for women in X or Y sector in Uganda? You can find this source because it's authentic and it's not just the ESOs in it, but it's everyone who's concerned and working very closely with women and entrepreneurs and the entrepreneurs themselves.
00:06:45
Speaker
Yes, amazing. Thank you so much. Yeah, I will look out for this Gender Action Collective. Definitely seems to be a very meaningful endeavor of yours. And also for the audience, ESO stands for Enterprise Support Organization.
00:07:00
Speaker
And it's really great that you are kind of gathering them together for to to create this data platform and to create this this platform also for advocacy, which is so important.
00:07:11
Speaker
So many questions, maybe just one at the moment.
Helt on Traders Case Study
00:07:14
Speaker
Can you give maybe couple of examples of businesses that you found really impactful in the past couple of years in Uganda that you think are really thriving and perhaps inspiring others?
00:07:27
Speaker
That's a good one, but I'll speak to one that's more recent. um So I'm not sure if you know this, Krisztina, but outside just doing our business, advisory work. We recently started investing directly in female-led businesses and will officially launch M-Kyala Capital early next year.
00:07:49
Speaker
And one of our investments, which is in Uganda, that's really exciting is women-led, it is youth-led, it's called Helt on Traders. And this business takes PET plastic waste and and transforms it into polyester thread. Now I say inspirational because I had no idea that this would happen.
00:08:13
Speaker
They are solving for two things simultaneously. So the waste issue, right? But also what I learned working with this business is what the whole textile industry is about in Uganda, right? So there's a huge textile trading space. And one of the biggest pieces of accessory or the very most important pieces is thread.
00:08:38
Speaker
And for the longest time, all the thread that was coming into the country was being imported. But if you remember the supply and chain issues that came with COVID came with Ukraine.
00:08:49
Speaker
It has been maybe 10 times more expensive for any trader to import thread. The demand is so high. And the company that we're working with used to be an importer of this thread.
00:09:04
Speaker
But with time and failing to meet their customer demand on time and failing to just manage this process and make an imagine, the entrepreneur behind this, Helen Moyansa, went back and thought there must be a way to make this work and went on to do so much research and found that in some countries they're making polyester thread using plastic, right?
00:09:32
Speaker
different types of plastic. And she thought, you know, we have a plastic waste issue. Why don't I try this with different types of plastic? And PET plastic is one of the biggest plastic wastes we have in the country.
00:09:47
Speaker
So tests R&D on that resulted into very high quality thread. Initially, there was a lot of questioning from the clients, like, will this work? Do we know it? We don't know how this works.
00:10:02
Speaker
And so she did a whole test run with a few of her leading clients who fell in love with it. And so this business has gone from importing to actually creating this product using a local ecosystem. It is circular.
00:10:17
Speaker
They've gone so much further than just using collectors, but they're working with youth groups in different communities who they pay very good sum to actually collect this PET plastic and have it cleaned and ready.
00:10:32
Speaker
And so before M-Kyala's capital injection came in, they were sort of ah subcontracting some equipment to turn over into the threat.
00:10:44
Speaker
But that was also impacting their timelines. And so they were ready to have their own equipment. They had their space. They'd walked around looking for capital. And if you know anything about Uganda, a young woman entering a financial institution,
00:11:00
Speaker
asking for a loan to buy a machine to make thread will not be taken seriously by anyone. No one understands that. So she was rejected across multiple financial spaces. And what's interesting is the revenue they're making is really good. So By the time Mchala came in to meet them, they were probably at about maybe $200,000 a year. And that's really, really good. Good numbers for ah ah you can then a business, but they still were not able to get any financing.
00:11:36
Speaker
And so we came in, looked at what they needed, injected the capital they needed to get the machines. And now, you know, they're probably close to about $500,000 just this year in revenue.
00:11:51
Speaker
They've been able to supply all their customers. The demand is still very, very high. They can't yet meet it 100%. And we're hoping that this will be like one of our flagship investments. But This investment has also unlocked more platforms for the entrepreneurs, a lot more knowledge.
00:12:10
Speaker
We are supporting them with technical assistance on different aspects on how to create like a working CRM system so that they can track all pieces of waste from collection to the factory to the thread.
00:12:25
Speaker
We're introducing them to some partners who work in this in industry, but in like bigger economies to bring even more knowledge on what they can use this plastic to do some more transformation in the textile space.
00:12:39
Speaker
And I think for me, that's been my most exciting investment lately. I've done so much in Uganda, but I feel like there's so much I have learned. And for me, those are my favorite investments.
00:12:51
Speaker
Not the ones where I can really crack the code, but the ones where I can learn a lot. And seeing this young woman pushing the bounce on something that's really unique, innovative, and also really focused on how does she not just create impact, but have a ah significant return. And I know for a fact, in a few years, probably everyone will be chasing after them. So I'm very glad that we pioneered that.
00:13:21
Speaker
this investment. meant But yeah, that's one of the things that one's exciting me lately. Okay, great. This is amazing.
Gender Lens Investing at Amchala
00:13:29
Speaker
I really like this example because you have woven into this example so many of the practices that you have as an advisor, as an investor for gender lens investing.
00:13:40
Speaker
Through already all of the things that you shared, there is this question about gender and how you include gender in the process, at the gender lens in the process.
00:13:51
Speaker
from what you're doing with the entrepreneurs all the way to the other ecosystem players that might not be taking this gender approach as well as they should or integrating it fully, you know, from the banks to the multilaterals.
00:14:07
Speaker
So tell us more about GenderLens Investing from your perspective, how it's central to to the work of M-Kyala. And by the way, also congratulations on this five year anniversary. It's amazing. Let's celebrate. It's fantastic.
00:14:22
Speaker
It is fantastic, Krisztina. But I've been wondering who's going to bring me cake, which is so weird. When you're an entrepreneur, you kind of have to figure out how to celebrate yourself here. But thank you for bringing up gender lens investing.
00:14:37
Speaker
I think the first thing i've I'll say that I have learned on this journey of working with entrepreneurs in the finance ecosystem is that for you to do something effectively, you really need to care.
00:14:54
Speaker
And for any topic that deviates from what we have been trained to understand as your typical financial mindset, you have to have a very high level of just internal care for the subject for it to work.
00:15:11
Speaker
Because I think financial systems are very ingrained in the history of what was business, what was trade. So you go back centuries and you realize that women were always a very, very small part of more of how it was communicated and trained, but actually never as participants, because we've always been involved in the things that must keep, you know, communities alive and livelihoods alive. But we've never been celebrated a lot for being either entrepreneurs or business people or people who bring money into systems. And so to change or to think about how to do that effectively, you have to care. And I'm very lucky that then my passion for this starts in my childhood. I was raised by a mother only.
00:16:05
Speaker
And she was an entrepreneur and she there was nothing she couldn't do. So she'd have this big job or this big business. And with Uganda, for example, where from she lived through very many changing political regimes.
00:16:21
Speaker
And what she told me is with every regime, so there was a change. So if you were trader and know you were doing that successfully, every time you had like war and regime change, that would immediately go away. And so you had to learn to start from scratch. And I think that's that entrepreneurial spirit. You have to be thinking about what can you do next what will work. And so that's something i I saw my whole life. So for me, seeing a woman doing business was never the outlier thing.
00:16:54
Speaker
It was the norm I grew up in. And I'm very, very cognizant of the fact that that's a privilege that I walk around with. And I get to not just care about women, but actually know for a fact that women can run successful businesses. Now, gender lens investing as a field has had a lot of ups and downs. I think this year we can attest to the fact that, you know, all of us working in this field have realized that we're going to struggle for a while. And what that means is that we have to continue to build the case for what we see as important.
Future Vision for Gender Representation
00:17:31
Speaker
From Mchala's perspective, this is what we're trying to do. We're trying to make sure that we bring the data to speak for itself.
00:17:42
Speaker
I hope for a day that when we are thinking about entrepreneurs or we talk about an entrepreneur ecosystem event or an accelerator, we know that we are going to walk in there and find all the people represented, women, men, young people, people who are differently abled.
00:18:03
Speaker
That it will no longer always be like, oh, we have to go worried about will we find any woman in this program? And I think that one of the things that's been lacking is proofs of concept or proofs of what is possible.
00:18:20
Speaker
By investing in these four women-led companies, what we want to show is that women can run businesses on the merit of simply being good entrepreneurs.
00:18:30
Speaker
But if you design capital and design resource allocation and design programs, thinking about their lived experience as entrepreneurs, how they learn, how they connect with the market, how they think about what is their objective, then what you're actually doing is simply improving their chances of success, right?
00:18:57
Speaker
You're not taking anything away from the ecosystem. Instead, you're bringing value. And I think what some of the challenge has always been that when people think about women as entrepreneurs, our minds already go to, oh, we need to make sure there's a childcare facility at the accelerator. And I'm always laughing at that. Like, it doesn't make me upset anymore, but it makes me laugh because I'm thinking,
00:19:23
Speaker
Do you know that we know what to do with our children? We have always known what we need to do. If we need to go to work, we do leave our kids somewhere. So why do you think we can't, why do we always think we have to think of the things that women always have in place?
00:19:39
Speaker
We always know where to leave the kids. We always have a plan for our kids. So if I sign up to your program, I already have a plan for that. I don't need you thinking that I need to know my kid is in the back room while I'm trying to to study. in And I think the reason that we jump to certain assumptions, right, is because we don't actually listen to who we're trying to serve.
00:20:03
Speaker
So I work with women. We listen to women every day at M-Kyala Ventures. our What we really see as our value proposition and what we do really well is we are able to listen to women.
00:20:17
Speaker
We're able to take what they are telling us and synthesize that into meaningful insights. and then take those insights and work with an ecosystem of players to deliver actionable results based on that. And that for us is how we incorporate gender in everything we do. So we're not simply counting women in programs. We are very concerned about what is the value exchange for not just the value delivery to the women, but what is that value exchange?
00:20:50
Speaker
What are the women taking and what are we also taking? And I think what we have done in the past five years is work with organizations and bring this like light bulb moment to them to show them that, you know what, there's actually real value here.
00:21:07
Speaker
And being in a room and people go, I did not know that. is the most exciting thing for me. Yeah. That's amazing. I love that. And as you say, it's about reasoning, truly embedding what you are learning and being there with an open mind about what is it exactly that will help.
00:21:27
Speaker
There is still so many barriers for women entrepreneurs and also actually women investors to access capital. Tell us more about how you are solving for this issue.
00:21:40
Speaker
How so many barriers still exist? What are the things that you do for well for the entrepreneurs, but also generally yourself, you're an investor as
MTAPA Capital's Approach
00:21:51
Speaker
well. like It's hard.
00:21:53
Speaker
Yeah. It is hard. It is hard. I mean, building a fund has been a very long process. We spent, first of all, just three years on just the ideation and trying to figure out exactly what do we want to create and what are we maintaining as Who do we want to serve? And for us, it's your SME, local-led female entrepreneur.
00:22:21
Speaker
The business has to have a woman in ownership. That is an absolute. It's okay if there's a a co-founder male or another female, but it has to be in ownership first and foremost.
00:22:35
Speaker
And when we put together all the insight ah from the women we're speaking to, the the number one thing that stood out for them was working capital and not just working capital, but working capital for growth. So they were not looking for like a three months fill up on stock. They're looking for a partner who that will be their working capital partner as they grow. So are they opening a new branch? Are they trying to get into a new country, a new city? Who are they going to lean on for the money that they need to get everything set up?
00:23:08
Speaker
And that's who we want to be for these women at M-Kyala Capital. So we don't want to do, you know, just a one-off investment and walk away. We want to be the long-haul partner, the three to five-year partner who can then after that sit back with them and say, okay, now that you have gone to this level, how do we even play a very strong role? So at that point, we're hoping that for the winning companies, we can even become now an equity partner because trust has been built and we have really contributed to the journey of growth.
00:23:43
Speaker
And the instrument we're working with is not typical debt, for example. We've had to like tweak this into, you know, a working capital facility, but there's follow on investment tied to some specific milestones, but we'd also spend about a year working with each company on operational efficiency.
00:24:06
Speaker
So the goal for us is to get women out of, you know, this day to day running, because normally women at the beginning of the business, you know, you're on top of everything, which for me is amazing, right? So By the time you're starting to scale, we want to focus on you know the strategic conversations and direction. So what we do is work on every function to make sure that the female entrepreneur is only focused on what information and which pieces she needs for decision making, but behind her, the business is running efficiently and she can track each piece of that in an efficient way. And we doing that is
00:24:47
Speaker
I don't call it hand-holding, but it is more, it's very intense. It's very intense work. But for us, it's the thing that we need to do very early on to make sure that everything that happens after that with the capital is is going to work.
00:25:02
Speaker
Women very much need to build relationships and trust with you. They don't chase money in that sense. And that's why I think sometimes I'll hear some of my colleagues in financing, but women are not applying for the loans or for the capital. And I'm always is thinking, really, we're still there.
00:25:21
Speaker
So women, if you expect women to chase the money, you're going to be sadly disappointed. Women need to know who you are. They need to know that you're a credible organization. And honestly, they do not care about you being international. They want to know who are you and what are you in this for? And are we aligned? And so if you're able to show that, that's a very important beginning point.
00:25:44
Speaker
We have a huge pipeline. We have way more demand than we can supply now. I feel like that is not even the problem we have. I think the issue for us now is trying to raise the money. right It is such a difficult time in the world now, but Our hope is that just as uniquely as we have thought about our offering for women, we can also find investors who can buy into that vision. You have to buy into that vision because we don't want people who are just looking to put money on a table that will bring them a return. You know, we will offer a return. This is not...
00:26:25
Speaker
a fund that's just going to say, oh, you're helping women. No, no, no. We are here to prove two things. We're here to prove that women can run businesses well, create impact and build financially viable businesses.
00:26:39
Speaker
And so we're hoping that we can find people who are ready to buy into the vision, ready to get in long term, and who are willing to learn with us the things that need to be learned building a gender lens fund, right? So that's also going to be interesting. We are in the heart of that process right now, talking to different investors.
00:27:04
Speaker
And as you can imagine, because this is not typical finance language for people who are very rooted in finance to say that we understand that we have to design a facility for women. So we're not ready. talking to a lot of those.
00:27:19
Speaker
We're talking to the Krisztina's of this world, you know, who not just have interest, who have passion, because I think there's something to build here. But every time you're trying to build something that's a little bit unique,
00:27:34
Speaker
unusual, you also have to think of unusual ways. So I really have, I cannot say, Krisztina, that we've cracked the fundraising code for the fund, but I think by sometime next year, we'll have some more concrete things to show. And yeah, and maybe at that point, we'll have some really great partners that we are working with on this.
00:27:58
Speaker
So let's imagine that some investors are listening to this podcast. Who is your ideal investor? How much you want them to invest? huh That's perfect. So we have a few categories.
00:28:12
Speaker
to So for the first two years of the fund, as any fund would work, is you know we need to do a lot of like building, proofing out the fund. We have four investments, which are all doing really well. So we have really good numbers on that.
00:28:27
Speaker
There's some more information that's going to come out from our annual report. But for the first two years of this process, we're raising between two and five million dollars to invest in more businesses, but also to do some follow on investing because that's core to our
Celebrating M-Kyala's Achievements
00:28:45
Speaker
work.
00:28:45
Speaker
We're looking for money from individuals who have money and would like to invest in a fund like this. So individual tickets are going from anywhere from $10,000 to $100,000. So if you're interested, we have an offering on that, but we also have We're looking at institutions that are interested in providing some fast loss capital as well. Again, because the first two years of our debt fund, it's really important so that we can cover some of the you know operational costs that will come with that. So we're hoping to find some institutions like foundations,
00:29:25
Speaker
specifically that might be interested in fast loss financing for the first two years. The goal for us is that the first investors will get sort of preferential rights down the road as the fund continues to perform.
00:29:41
Speaker
Those who came in first will get a sort of more equitable slice of the work because we know that to come in this early, even with everything that you know about us is taking a big chance on us. So if we do raise up to 2 million, we know we'll be able to run, to do investments for the next two years.
00:30:03
Speaker
But our sweet spot is about 5 million to get the kind of portfolio we are looking for. Amazing. Super. Well, like we said, this podcast is an opportunity to celebrate and to share your achievements, be proud of your achievements.
00:30:21
Speaker
So tell us about, yeah, you've been on this journey for five years with M-Kyala What are your biggest achievements or something that you're really proud of? Let me mention two. So I think the first top one is the four investments we've been able to make in 2024.
00:30:38
Speaker
So invested in four companies. I've mentioned the one in Uganda. We have one in Rwanda and two in Kenya, all doing really well. Krisztina, you'll get the annual report where you'll see some of the stories, but these are phenomenal stories. And one of the businesses we supported, the one in Rwanda, which is also It's an eco-footwear brand. It's an international brand. This is a million dollar business exports to Europe, to the US, has partnerships with the likes of Tommy Hilfiger, sells in Rwanda.
00:31:15
Speaker
But what's interesting, someone would say, why would million dollar business, which has raised capital before, look to work with them, M-Kyala Ventures. And what was interesting is when they were expanding to Kenya, they did not have working capital. They could not find one provider, even on those numbers,
00:31:36
Speaker
to give them $50,000. fifty thousand dollars And so we were like, no, we will do this for you. And so it really goes to show that for women that climb oh the growth of a business and the need for different types of capital is not always going to be met because you're doing well.
00:31:56
Speaker
You're going to be questioned. And you know, the funny thing for them, the biggest question from some financial institutions are like, you make shoes? You know, like no one felt like that was quote unquote sexy enough.
00:32:10
Speaker
It's an awesome company. So they take used tire waste and they transform it into this eco-friendly shoe brand. I mean, the shoes are phenomenal. I wear them.
00:32:21
Speaker
The company is called Uzuri K and Y. And there's two female founders that started this over 10 years ago, right? So there was a lot of proof there that the working capital facility that we designed makes sense.
00:32:36
Speaker
and there's demand for it. So investing in four companies has been such a delight. One of the other companies takes the waste and uses a black soldier fly to create like a multiple bio-based products, fertilizer, animal feed.
00:32:56
Speaker
And now they're ideating on some sort of like pharmaceutical products, which would be more organic because of using this.
00:33:06
Speaker
And so super exciting. And then one other company that's in sustainable agriculture that works with smallholder farmers who grow biodiverse things like ginger, tamaric, you know, the the very indigenous based products, clean farming and They take that, make it into multiple types of condiments, and these are sold in supermarkets all over Kenya.
00:33:35
Speaker
And also our funding helped them unlock the whole supermarket as scene for sale. So that for me has been such a beautiful outcome because working on something and seeing that it works and there's demand for it has been phenomenal.
Gender Smart Lending Toolkit Development
00:33:52
Speaker
The other thing I'm really proud of is our work with the Gender Smart Lending Toolkit. That was an exciting one and a half years where we did a lot of work, like trying to talk to ah hundreds of women in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania.
00:34:08
Speaker
and financial institutions and ESOs. But I think one of the unique aspects of that work is that we did like mystery shopping exercise where we went into financial institutions posing as female entrepreneurs and, you know, basically asking things like, this is the business I run.
00:34:27
Speaker
If I bank with you or have a relationship with your institution, how would you serve me? And, you know, the insights were incredible because, Krisztina, a lot of reports that we'll read will say things like, women are not confident. Women don't go to access capital because the interest rates are high, because of collateral.
00:34:51
Speaker
So there's always this sort of one-sided piece to the coin that never really makes sense to me because at the same time, reports will say women have the highest repayment rate and the best repayment behavior.
00:35:04
Speaker
So I'm always torn between what exactly are we saying? So how are they not confident? And who's measuring that? And is it that my argument for that is always, if you get up and start a business in economies like those that we live in in East Africa, no one should ever, ever accuse you of not being confident because it takes some really, really, really high risk appetite to do that, right? Because everything is already going to be working against you in some way. The taxes, the lack of systems, the lack of infrastructure, the expensive talent, which you'd be surprised by, you know, for you to get someone good, it's going to be expensive. So no one can ever sell me on confidence, right? Being an issue for women who start businesses.
00:35:54
Speaker
What we were trying to do with this work was understand what is that journey? a woman takes when she's starting to have a relationship with a financial institution, what are the things that are in that process? And how is also the financial institution working around anything that's specific to women versus other type of entrepreneurs?
00:36:18
Speaker
And so we picked out a lot of insights. And for me, the beauty with those insights was that there's a two, it's a relationship, right? A woman wants to benefit, but an institution also wants to understand what they get out of this.
00:36:33
Speaker
And so we learned things like even at fast contact with a financial institution, there's no information available. So even if ah a bank had something like a product for women, at the entry point of trying to get that information, everyone would simply tell us, I think you just need to fill a form.
00:36:52
Speaker
I think you not just need to fill a form. So there's a whole knowledge gap here on like, what is the product? Who is it serving? How should a woman start this relationship? But also on the flip side, one of the questions we asked a lot of women was, if you were rejected before for a facility by a financial institution, would you reapply maybe a year or two down the road? And most of them said no.
00:37:19
Speaker
And so when we dug a little deeper, we realized that for women, you know, that rejection felt like an invalidation. Let me use those words. And so part of our technical support for women was, look, this is simply a transactional relationship, right? this If someone says no to capital, your job is to first of all figure out why did they say no? What needs to change? What do I need to do better? And you need to go and ask those questions.
00:37:46
Speaker
And so that when you get to the point that they say, OK, now you're good enough, go back. So don't feel like that is an invalidation. But on the other thing we realized is that very few women would actually have like an advisor to help them navigate. like If you weren't alone.
00:38:04
Speaker
This is what you need to normally have in place. This is how you should approach it. Make sure you negotiate that interest because you actually have the capacity to you know to negotiate.
00:38:15
Speaker
So many of the women were working in blind. And it's very difficult if you walk into an institution blind, which is also blind to who you are and what should you right? So we picked out a lot of insights that we felt were helpful, helpful,
00:38:29
Speaker
That toolkit is a webpage. And the reason for that is that you can access it at any time. We want to hopefully pilot it with several institutions and not just banks, right? We're going for a microfinance. Any type of financial service provider can take the insights and recommendations from this toolkit and implement them into something workable. And yes, that's work that I'm really, really proud of
Caroline's Passion and Inspiration
00:38:58
Speaker
as well. Yeah.
00:38:59
Speaker
Amazing. I want to know more about this toolkit because it's definitely very linked to a lot of the work that we're doing as well. I'm asking this question of everyone. Your answer doesn't need to be long, but how do you feel being a woman doing this job?
00:39:14
Speaker
I feel good. I feel good. Christina, if I had to choose something to do all day, every day, it would be just sit and listen to women entrepreneurs talk and just advise them. So one of the things that we've started is an office hours that we're going to start promoting a lot more because the demand for it is also high.
00:39:38
Speaker
I'm sitting at least three times a week with women for two hours, at least listening to the things they are building, Krisztina, and it is magical. And it's so magical because it's so easy to relate.
00:39:53
Speaker
It's so easy to connect because I'm not looking for a winning pitch. I'm just taking in the energy. I'm taking in the story.
00:40:04
Speaker
I don't care about a pitch deck, right? I care about what people are building and giving that exchange of value for me is has been some of the most energizing thing for me, especially in a year like this.
00:40:19
Speaker
So i feel good. I feel connected. As we approach the end of this episode, three quick questions. What's keeping you optimistic?
00:40:30
Speaker
The one thing that's keeping me optimistic is all the things that women are building. That is it. That is, I struggled when things were changing in the world, but I reminded myself that I didn't start this because of what was happening in the world.
00:40:47
Speaker
I started this because of what was happening for women. And if those women have not given up and I keep telling them not to give up, then I'm not giving up on me and them either.
00:40:58
Speaker
Yeah, that is what's keeping me motivated. Who or what is inspiring you? Hmm, it's a good one. I mean, it's still the women.
00:41:11
Speaker
I think it's just still the women. I have some really awesome champions. I have a good team. I have a team that is so, believes so much in this work that even when I had to make some significant changes to things like the payroll, they were like, we will do this for free if we have to, but we are doing this. And I think for me, that's also been so heartwarming.
00:41:40
Speaker
So the journey hasn't been very lonely. I also happen to have a spouse who cares so much about this work. And sometimes when I can't see the thing, the big picture, he's like, oh my gosh, this is the thing, you know? So yeah, I think I have some really good champions around me. My team being a big one as well.
00:42:03
Speaker
Beautiful.
Final Thoughts and Recommendations
00:42:05
Speaker
And are you reading something that you would recommend? Oh, yes. hey So my latest read is Testament by Margaret Wood.
00:42:16
Speaker
I might be saying that. I hope I'm saying that correctly. Yeah, by Margaret Atwood. Sorry, not Wood. So that Testament is what I'm reading. So it's like a spinoff from The Handmaid's Tale.
00:42:26
Speaker
a really, really good book that I'm enjoying. So yeah, I would say people should read it. It's really good fiction with a strong message.
00:42:37
Speaker
about gender so at a very appropriate time in the world great thank you and do you have any final thoughts or any ask or advice for fellow change makers and the listeners yeah I think first of all thank you Krisztina for putting this together this is not a generic thank you this is thank you for making sure that the conversation stays alive, even at a time when it's trying to be pushed down. So this is really, really important work that you're doing. And I appreciate you for this and for having me here.
00:43:15
Speaker
And I think I'd say for anyone who's listening, When you think about gender, don't worry too much about wondering if you should think about women one way, men the other way, and other genders, right? We're living in a way more aff fluid and expressive world, which I think is very beautiful.
00:43:37
Speaker
But I want you to think about yourself. and ask yourself really tough questions. When you sit back and see what you have, do you feel like there's something that you can bring to others? you feel like there's some benefit of your own lived experience? I'm not saying money. I'm not saying resources. I'm saying you.
00:43:59
Speaker
And so in a time like this, I would say to everyone, remember that you have so many assets within you and tap into those assets, ah share them with others.
00:44:12
Speaker
Look at yourself as someone who is bigger than bigger than the news cycle you're listening to or the social media negativity you might be absorbing, but try to absorb the things that bring light and life to you and share them with others, but seek the assets within you. Go and do that thing that you know will make you happy and stay in that place because that's a beautiful place and that's a place where the rest of the world around you will find some joy as well.
00:44:45
Speaker
And support Mchala Ventures.
00:44:49
Speaker
Yes. Yes. Thank you so much,
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:44:54
Speaker
Caroline. It was so nice to have you on the show today. Thank you for this wonderful conversation.
00:45:00
Speaker
Thank you too, Krisztina I really appreciate it And have a nice day in Paris. Yes. Thank you. You too. Have a nice Friday.
00:45:13
Speaker
If you'll stay with us, thank you so much for the time that you took to discover one of the amazing women changing finance. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with your friends, colleagues, and on social media.
00:45:25
Speaker
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00:45:36
Speaker
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00:45:52
Speaker
Women Changing Finance is part of the Impact Alpha podcast network. Smart conversations by and for impact investing professionals.