Women-led businesses will have to adopt partnerships, capacity building, and upskilling to grow their ventures.
This is according to the co-founder of Kayana Creatives Patricia Okello.
Kayana Creatives is a community of female entrepreneurs' who have come together to network and seek partnerships to grow their enterprises.
Speaking on the sidelines of an award program for the most impact women businesses, Okello said that traditional norms have locked out women from accessing finance to run businesses.
"The lenders should stop only looking at land as collateral they should also be looking at the inventory to be able to lend to women-led businesses," said Okello.
In most of the developing world like Kenya, access to financial services for women is still very low.
She notes that Access to credit can open up economic opportunities for women, and bank accounts can be a gateway to the use of additional financial services.
according to the International Finance Corporation, allowing women-owned businesses to thrive and grow by ensuring access to credit can drive progress on several Sustainable Development Goals.
Advancing women’s financial inclusion is linked to eliminating poverty, reducing hunger and food security, achieving good health and well-being, fostering quality education, and promoting gender equality.
The event honoured the outstanding achievements of female entrepreneurs in the MSME sector across various categories, showcasing their innovation, resilience, and commitment to community impact.
The move aims to boost financial inclusion for Women-led or owned Small and Medium Enterprises (WSMEs) in Kenya.
"These awards recognize small SMEs that don’t have an opportunity to be celebrated, for instance, the 27 finalists were pulled from a pull of 340 who had applied,' said Okello.
Currently, over 900 women have been touched by the program.
With a financing gap of over $49 billion (Sh6.3 trillion) impacting women SMEs in Africa, the program looks to address barriers such as limited access to information, collateral requirements, cultural biases, complex business processes, and the disproportionate impact of climate change on WSMEs.