By The African Development Bank and AXIAN Group have launched a digital finance programme targeting more than 34,000 women-led businesses across five African countries, seeking to expand access to finance, digital tools and business support.
The programme, announced on Wednesday, will use AXIAN’s digital financial services platforms, Mixx and MVola, to provide financial products, digital lending, financial literacy and business development support to women entrepreneurs.
The initiative is backed by the African Development Bank’s Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa (AFAWA) programme and the Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi).
The programme comes as women entrepreneurs across Africa continue to face difficulties obtaining formal financing. The African Development Bank said the financing gap for women entrepreneurs on the continent is estimated at $49 billion.
Under the first component, 34,000 women-led micro, small and medium-sized enterprises in Madagascar, Tanzania and Senegal will receive tailored digital financial products and services.
A second component will provide financial literacy, digital skills and entrepreneurship training to 25,000 women in Madagascar, Tanzania, Senegal, Togo and Comoros, according to the bank.
The initiative will rely on mobile money, digital lending and alternative credit assessment tools to reach entrepreneurs who have traditionally had limited access to conventional financial services.
The programme’s approach combines access to finance with skills development, reflecting the partners’ focus on helping women entrepreneurs use digital financial services to manage and expand their businesses.
“Across Africa, millions of women are already running successful businesses. The challenge is not entrepreneurship. It is access to finance, to digital tools and to opportunities for growth,” said Erwan Gelebart, CEO of AXIAN Digibank and Fintech.
Gelebart said Mixx and MVola would use technology and financial innovation to help women entrepreneurs strengthen their businesses, create jobs and participate more fully in the digital economy.
Melissa Basque-Roux, coordinator of the African Development Bank’s AFAWA initiative, said women entrepreneurs remained important to Africa’s economic transformation but continued to face barriers to finance, digital tools and business support.
“Through AFAWA and We-Fi, the African Development Bank is pleased to support this partnership with AXIAN, Mixx and MVola,” Basque-Roux said.
She said the partnership would expand tailored digital financial services, strengthen financial literacy and create new opportunities for women-led businesses across Africa.
The programme has five stated priorities: expanding access to digital finance for women-led businesses, strengthening financial and digital literacy, developing financial products tailored to women entrepreneurs, increasing digital inclusion through mobile technology, and supporting women-owned businesses in the formal economy.
Implementation will be led by Mixx and MVola, working with local operating companies in the participating countries.
For women entrepreneurs, digital finance can provide an alternative route to financial services where traditional lenders require credit histories, collateral or other documentation that smaller businesses may not have.
The African Development Bank and AXIAN did not provide a breakdown of the expected financing amounts available to each business under the new programme.
The initiative builds on the development bank’s wider partnership with AXIAN Telecom.
In January 2025, the African Development Bank approved a $160 million senior corporate loan to support AXIAN Telecom’s expansion of digital connectivity and financial inclusion across nine African countries.
That financing included more than $10 million for 22,000 women entrepreneurs in Madagascar through AXIAN’s MVola platform. The bank also said a $2.5 million grant would support financial literacy and credit access for 34,000 women-owned businesses in Madagascar, Tanzania and Senegal.
The latest programme extends that focus by combining digital financial services with business and financial education across a wider group of African markets.
AXIAN operates across 21 countries and has businesses spanning energy, digital banking and fintech, real estate, financial services and telecommunications, according to the company.
The partnership comes as mobile money and other digital financial services become increasingly important channels for expanding financial access in African markets.
The African Development Bank’s AFAWA initiative is designed to increase financing for women-owned and women-led businesses by addressing structural barriers to their access to capital and opportunities for growth.
We-Fi is a global partnership focused on improving women’s access to finance, markets, technology and business capacity in developing countries.
The partners said the programme is intended to help women-owned businesses strengthen their operations, create employment and participate more fully in the formal economy.
