2020 CONCORDIA AFRICA INITIATIVE

Transformational Power of Investing in Women Through Strategic Partnerships

MainStage

Programming Partner: U.S. International Development Finance Corporation

• Charity Wallace emphasized the fact that investing in women leads to stronger and more prosperous families, communities, and countries. To date, the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) has mobilized more than $3 billion toward gender-lens investing to support women’s economic empowerment. In 2019, the agency launched 2x Africa, which commits to mobilizing $1 billion in investments to support women’s economic empowerment on the African continent. 

“At the MOMs initiative, we look for innovation in the form of technology, business model, and delivery, and we use that technology to support the underserved,” Dia Martin

• Hundreds of thousands of women continue to die each year from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth, with more than half of these deaths occurring in Sub-Saharan Africa. In 2019, DFC, in partnership with U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Merck for Mothers, and Credit Suisse, launched the Financing for Maternal Outcomes Matters (MOMs) Alliance, which commits $50 million to improving and expanding infrastructure, services, and access to maternal care in the region. Dia Martin described the synergistic role that each party involved in the MOMs Alliance plays: DFC provides the necessary financing, USAID provides technical assistance, Merck for Mothers provides grant financing capital, and Credit Suisse provides financial structuring expertise. 
• The first investment of the MOMs Alliance went toward supporting LifeBank, a women-founded business in Nigeria. According to Temie Giwa-Tubosun, LifeBank delivers critical resources, namely blood and blood products, to hospitals serving mothers. The leading cause of maternal death is postpartum hemorrhage; 80% of women suffering these hemorrhages can be saved if blood is available. LifeBank’s partnership with DFC has empowered the former to operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, as well as expand to eight states in Nigeria and to Kenya. To date, LifeBank has moved some 30,000 units of medical supplies to hospitals and saved the lives of over 12,000 mothers.

“We all know that investing in women leads to stronger families, more stable communities, and more prosperous countries,” Charity Wallace