Elizabeth Gathu, a leader in development finance at Microsoft Consulting, discusses her journey as a woman in a male-dominated field, the challenges women and youth face in agri-value chains, and the importance of gender-intelligent banking. She emphasizes designing financial solutions tailored to women's unique needs and leveraging group dynamics to improve access to capital and scale businesses across Africa.
Elizabeth Gathu, known as Liz Gassu in the finance industry, recently appeared on Good Morning Kenya to discuss her journey and work in the world of finance, particularly development finance focused on trade and agricultural value chains. Her insights shed light on the challenges women and youth face in accessing finance and trade opportunities, and how tailored financial solutions can empower them to scale their businesses.
Liz works with Microsoft Consulting under the Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance department. Her specialization lies in development finance, where she designs products and programs that support trade and agricultural value chains.
She shared how her career began with addressing inefficiencies in client service at a bank, which led to forming a committee to speed up client solutions. This micro-level experience expanded to engaging in continental forums focused on trade across Africa, such as the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), where she works on facilitating the movement of goods and services across regional blocks.
Growing up with parents who were MSMEs (Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises) in Kenya, Liz witnessed firsthand the impact of limited access to opportunities. This personal background fuels her passion for ensuring that women and youth entrepreneurs gain access to opportunities and capital.
Her role allows her to bring voices from the ground to policy makers and financial institutions, ensuring that capital structures and policies reflect the realities faced by entrepreneurs, especially women and youth.
Liz highlighted a significant barrier: the disconnect between what happens on the ground and how capital is allocated by financial institutions. Many institutions lack a true understanding of the challenges faced by women and youth entrepreneurs in informal markets.
By bringing data and stories from the ground, Liz helps design financial products that align with the needs of these entrepreneurs. For example, understanding that a woman selling goods in a market may have to care for her child while working, or that she may have personal financial needs alongside business capital requirements, is crucial in designing effective financial solutions.
Liz explained the components of trade and agricultural value chains, including producers, traders, aggregators, and end consumers. She emphasized the importance of understanding how goods move (e.g., eggs, milk, beef) and how money flows through these processes.
Financial products must consider the entire cycle—from purchasing inputs to selling products and receiving payments. Different trade finance instruments such as performance bonds, bid bonds, invoice financing, and letters of credit play roles depending on the scale and nature of the trade.
Women and youth often operate at the lower end of value chains, typically in informal settings without asset ownership. This creates several challenges:
Liz stressed the importance of making informal businesses visible through record-keeping, whether via notebooks or digital platforms, to demonstrate business viability to financial institutions.
Financial institutions are increasingly recognizing the value of social capital within groups. Group lending models now often accept group dynamics and regular contributions as collateral instead of physical assets.
Women tend to perform well in group settings, showing better repayment rates and loyalty. This approach helps women and youth graduate from informal group borrowing to individual formal financial services.
Liz advocates for gender-intelligent banking, which designs financial solutions tailored to the specific needs and behaviors of women entrepreneurs rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.
She compared this to medicine, where symptoms differ between men and women, requiring gender-specific treatment. Similarly, financial products must consider women's unique characteristics, such as their preference for group learning and peer-led capacity building.
Liz's work sits at the intersection of people on the ground and decision-makers, including development finance institutions and donors. By translating insights from women and youth entrepreneurs into data and stories, she helps design programs that address their biggest gaps and scale their businesses.
This includes preparing entrepreneurs to receive opportunities through capacity building, grants, and information sharing.
For Liz, success means transforming women entrepreneurs from small-scale survival businesses into resilient, thriving enterprises that can scale and employ others.
She shared an example of working with a major FMCG company that supports women entrepreneurs over several years to become ISO certified and integrated into formal procurement systems, enabling them to access larger financial loans and grow sustainably.
Agricultural value chains support millions of families in Africa, and empowering women within these chains has a significant impact on economic growth and livelihoods.
Liz's message is clear and inspiring: "You can do it, and the future is bright."
Her journey and work demonstrate that with the right support, tailored financial solutions, and inclusive policies, women and youth can overcome barriers and lead Africa's economic transformation.
Elizabeth Gathu's insights highlight the critical need for gender-intelligent approaches in finance and trade, especially within agricultural value chains. By understanding and addressing the unique challenges faced by women and youth entrepreneurs, stakeholders can design effective solutions that unlock opportunities and drive sustainable growth across Africa.
