Bente Consulting ApS is contracted by Financial Sector Deepening Mozambique to provide input as international gender specialist to the World Bank finaced project on Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi).The project will run for 50 weeks from April 2023 and comprises four phases. Bente Consulting has an input of 24 wds, mainly focused on data collection methodology and technical assistance to selected financial institutions on development and roll-out of gender sensitive financial products.

The objective of the initiative is to address financial and non-financial constraints faced by women-owned/led SMEs in IDA and IBRD eligible countries and territories. The World Bank (WB) We-Fi Program covers activities implemented by the WB in support of the We-Fi public sector window activities. The Mozambique We-Fi project aims to i) improve WSME access to digital tools for improved access to financial services, ii) integrate gender in large firms´ procurement processes, iii) increase WMSEs´
digital skills to expand their ability to access to markets.Under the access to finance component, the project will support two financial institutions in
developing and strengthening their digital financial service offering targeting WSMEs,including through streamlined gender-oriented offering and improved outreach and dissemination. The activity seeks to directly benefit at least 450 WSMEs associated to the financial institutions and complement the current program’s focus on orienting gendered financial products towards digital channels for maximizing outreach to WSMEs. Results will increase WSMEs access to financial services and adoption of digital financial services. Findings also seek to inform other relevant project operations focused on WSMEs and SME access to finance, in a way that the resulting approaches could be scaled-up to reach out to a wider user base.