In my house, my son and I are out­num­bered. It’s just the two of us against my wife and our two daugh­ters. If you think that’s just my per­son­al expe­ri­ence, think again. Across Kenya, the sta­tis­tics tell the same sto­ry — women out­num­ber men. Accord­ing to DataRe­por­tal (2024), Kenya’s pop­u­la­tion stands at 55.65 mil­lion, with 50.4% female and 49.6% male. This means that for every 100 men, there are approx­i­mate­ly 101 women.

Despite being the major­i­ty, women still lack fair access to cred­it and cap­i­tal. As we gear up for the Inter­na­tion­al Women’s Day on March 8, we must ask — What progress are we cel­e­brat­ing if finan­cial exclu­sion per­sists? This is not to deny past progress.

Africa has the high­est female entre­pre­neur­ial activ­i­ty glob­al­ly, stand­ing at 24%, accord­ing to the Inter­na­tion­al Finance Cor­po­ra­tion (IFC). How­ev­er, despite this proven busi­ness poten­tial, only 7% of women-owned MSMEs in Kenya, for instance, have access to for­mal financ­ing. The rest are left to bor­row from infor­mal lenders and micro­fi­nance insti­tu­tions that charge inter­est rates as high as 5% per month. Imag­ine bor­row­ing Ksh 100,000 for your busi­ness, only to repay Ksh 160,000 in a year, and that’s before oper­a­tional costs. We have not even talked about the mobile lenders whose inter­est could go up to 10% a month. Women are forced to bor­row even for the small­est of needs — whether it’s a wheel­bar­row, farm inputs, or stock for their kiosks — yet they are met with impos­si­ble repay­ment terms. If we con­tin­ue allow­ing this, then what exact­ly are we cel­e­brat­ing? Real empow­er­ment starts when women can access fair, afford­able, and sus­tain­able credit.

It is an estab­lished fact that finan­cial sys­tem in Kenya favors men, forc­ing women to fight for scraps. For instance, only 1% of land titles in Kenya are owned by women, while an addi­tion­al 5% are held joint­ly, accord­ing to the World Bank. This means that when a woman needs a loan, she lacks col­lat­er­al, while men, who own most of the land, are able to secure the fund­ing nec­es­sary to expand their busi­ness­es. Even in the boom­ing dig­i­tal finance sec­tor, gen­der dis­par­i­ties per­sist. The 2024 FinAc­cess House­hold Sur­vey reports that 82% of Kenyan women have access to for­mal finan­cial ser­vices, pri­mar­i­ly through mobile mon­ey plat­forms. While this sig­ni­fies progress, for­mal bank­ing, insur­ance, and pen­sion ser­vices remain out of reach for mil­lions of women. If the sys­tem is designed against them, how can we expect them to thrive?

Yet the finan­cial rev­o­lu­tion women need already exists — but it lacks sup­port. Women have cre­at­ed their own finan­cial sys­tems through chamas, table bank­ing, and Finan­cial Self-Help Insti­tu­tions (FSIs). How­ev­er, these promis­ing insti­tu­tions lack what they need most – cap­i­tal, forc­ing women to turn to expen­sive micro­fi­nance insti­tu­tions and infor­mal lenders. The gov­ern­ment and finan­cial insti­tu­tions must rec­og­nize FSIs as the back­bone of finan­cial inclu­sion for women and sup­port them with bulk fund­ing. If FSIs were linked to banks and giv­en gov­ern­ment-backed cred­it guar­an­tees, they could trans­form women’s finan­cial inde­pen­dence in unprece­dent­ed ways. Kenya must look at suc­cess­ful mod­els like India’s SHG-Bank Link­age Pro­gram, which enables self-help groups to access struc­tured fund­ing instead of bor­row­ing in small, expen­sive amounts. If the same was done here, FSIs could receive bulk fund­ing, allow­ing women to bor­row at fair rates with­out the weight of unfair interest.

At the same time, dig­i­tal finan­cial lit­er­a­cy pro­grams must be expand­ed to equip rur­al women with the knowl­edge they need to man­age finances and make informed finan­cial deci­sions. The lend­ing sys­tem itself must also be restruc­tured to con­sid­er new ways of assess­ing cred­it­wor­thi­ness and make the process more inclusive.

Women do not need char­i­ty. They need fair finan­cial poli­cies that allow them to build, expand, and con­trol their own futures. If Kenya tru­ly wants to move for­ward, we can­not afford to keep half of our pop­u­la­tion finan­cial­ly hand­i­capped. This is the moment to rethink how we empow­er women — not with words, but with wealth. Think green, act green!