Ecobank Tanzania, a member of Ecobank Group, the leading pan-African bank, is launching its flagship Women’s Programme ‘Ellevate’ to empower and support women-led and/or women-focused business with the financial and value-added solutions that will help their businesses reach their full potential and succeed.
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) account for about 90% of all businesses in Africa and women own about a third of all registered African SMEs. Indeed, one-in-four (25.9%) of adult women in Africa start or manage a business.
However, women have not enjoyed equal access to high quality, demand-driven financial services and it is estimated that women-owned SMEs face a USD 42 billion financing gap, making lack of access to financing a common constraint to their business growth.
Charles Asiedu, Managing Director, Ecobank Tanzania said: “The growth of women-led and women-focused businesses have been long hampered by a range of impediments, including access to finance. We have specially designed Ellevate to meet the needs of women entrepreneurs through the provision of comprehensive, customized and tailormade solutions which include favorable lending rates, smart cash management enablement and a suite of value-added services such as leadership training, mentoring and networking opportunities. Ecobank Commercial Bank is allocating a minimum of 10% of its loan portfolio to women’s businesses. Women-led businesses are a largely underserved market and Ecobank Tanzania is determined to help them reach their potential, grasp business opportunities and become both scalable and sustainable. This will enable them to play a major role in Africa’s social and economic development, in addition to creating millions of the jobs needed by this and future generations
of Tanzanians.”
For further information about Ellevate, please visit www.ecobank.com/ellevate
Ellevate Programme Content Overview
Ellevate offers wide-reaching suite of solutions combining smarter money management, discounted financing and
value-added services to deliver what businesses need at exactly the right time, including:
- Cash Management and Collections
• Business Current Account
• Omni Lite online banking
• EcobankPay digital payments
• Smarter POS solutions - Liability and Loans
• Savings and Investments
• Receivables Financing
• Contract or Local Purchase Order Financing
• Asset Financing - Support and Development
• Business and leadership training with Ecobank Academy
• Online business promotion with Google My Business
• Networking
Who Can Benefit From Ellevate?
The offering is available to:
• Women who own businesses
• Businesses with a percentage of women employees over 30%
• Businesses with a percentage of women on the board over 30%
• Companies that produce goods/services for women including beauty and hair products, Corporate wear, fashion, shoes and accessories, cosmetics, jewellery and perfume, health/wellness products, sanitary products, sportswear.
About Ecobank Tanzania
Ecobank Tanzania was established and licensed on 2nd February 2010. It is licensed and supervised by the Bank of Tanzania. The Bank has its Head Office located at Acacia Building, 84 Kinondoni road, and has five branches, seven Automated Teller Machines (ATMs), 417 Xpress Point agencies, and serves numerous customers through its Consumer, Commercial and banking, SME and treasury divisions.
The Bank is 99.9% owned by Ecobank Transnational Incorporated (ETI), the pan-African financial conglomerate headquartered in Lomé, Togo, which operates in 33 countries in Africa.
Ecobank Group also has a banking license in France and representative offices in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; Johannesburg, South Africa; Beijing, China; London, UK; and Dubai, the United Arab Emirates. The Group offers a full suite of banking products, services and solutions including bank and deposit accounts, loans, cash management, advisory, trade, securities, wealth and asset management.
ETI is listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchanges in Lagos, the Ghana Stock Exchange in Accra, and the Bourse Régionale des Valeurs Mobilières in Abidjan. For further information please visit www.ecobank.co.tz
