The African Women responds to the Intelekt Development Strategy emphasis on the role of women in business and education as well as to calls to empower women entrepreneurs, in particular SMEs, through better access to finance.

In this respect, the goals set by UN, we have developed under the Initiative, integrated financing programs for women’s entrepreneurship development in order to:

• contribute to a more equitable business environment for women entrepreneurs and enhance their contribution to economic development;
• develop SME financing instruments and mechanisms to enhance the financial market and assist successful SMEs to grow their enterprises.

The African Women Initiative has a Plan of Action with the following objectives:

1. Raise awareness and provide financial support to support women in not only becoming great entrepreneurs, but also, increasing their participation in STEM related disciplines like Software Engineering.
2. Reinforce the business support provision. In order to ensure that business support services provision is effective, appropriate and accessible to women entrepreneurs who want to either start or grow a business, the program seeks to:
   • Strengthen the institutional and technical capacity of the national businesswomen associations / institutions that support the emergence and growth of women-owned SMEs;
   • Enhance ICT use and promotion of effective on-line business support and management tools provision. In implementing these activities, the program will seek close collaboration and active partnership with existing networks and programs such as FCEM, UNIFEM, national and regional businesswomen associations in Africa, to leverage and build on their achievements.
3. Develop concrete forms of support to enterprise and tech education and entrepreneurship development