OLEJU - Innovation for Women

Ogholi Alero is an experienced gender equality and social development professional with over 7 years of full time experience leading diverse teams to implement and manage social innovation / development projects, building partnerships and collaborating with multiple stakeholders/partners, to make sustainable impact in underserved communities. A woman of impact, a woman for innovation for women and a woman in leadership. I also asked Ogholi her thoughts on leadership which will feature in our newsletter due out in September be sure to subscribe here. In the meantime it is with pleasure that I can bring to the wilm&a community the story of Oleju. Best wishes, Laila

HOW AN AFRICAN SOCIAL ENTEPRISE IS REVOLUTIONIZING FINANCIAL INCLUSION FOR RURAL WOMEN ENTREPRENEURS

OLEJU Enterprise is a social enterprise situated in the Niger- Delta region of Nigeria, headquartered in Sapele, a peri- urban community surrounding by numerous rural settlements, working towards accelerating the economic growth of rural women. OLEJU was to tackle financial and digital exclusion of rural women entrepreneurs. This is a leading cause of extreme poverty among rural women, despite their efforts and contributions to the economic landscape in their communities. OLEJU products and services helps users to generate genuine, real-time business documentation, provides framework for business performance diagnostics and helps generate business  status report while also providing simple financial literacy modules and business management platform that is continuously accessible anytime and anywhere as an online and offline service, making the products user-friendly for rural communities. OLEJU through its innovative products and services promotes financial inclusion for formal and informal Micro and Small entrepreneurs at the bottom of the market pyramid in different sectors and value chains.

The name OLEJU is an abbreviated word from the Itsekiri dialect of the Niger- Delta people in Nigeria that means “uncommon beauty” in literal terms, which we coined to mean “Innovation for women”

BACKGROUND & CONTEXT

Women in Nigeria face multiple barriers that hinder them from accessing economic opportunities such as access to critical productive resources like land, capital and markets. 49.2% of Nigeria’s population is female, but despite being almost half the population, women remain hugely underprivileged and struggle with different forms of social, economic and cultural limitations leading to high poverty rate among women.

According to available data, women access less than 12% of credit facilities in the financial sector. 65% of women live below the poverty line in Nigeria. Only 42.6% of women had access to formal financial services compared to 54.5% of men as at 2014, while 26.5 million women are excluded from digital financial solution and commerce.

Also according to an IFAD report, 40% of global GDPA is generated by rural women; therefore, bridging the financial inclusion gap for rural women is imperative for global economic development to be sustained. Furthermore, increasing access to finance for women is not just good for them, but for the entire economy because women are important economic power-blocks that remains largely untapped and women’s inclusion can catalyze digital economic growth.

SOLUTION - INNOVATION:

To this end we developed a core innovative product that utilizes  holistic technology based, rural women focused, and easy to use systems/ tools to enhance financial inclusion of formal and informal Micro and Small-scale entrepreneurs across sectors.

OLEJU developed a Business Development toolkit (BD-KIT) which helps rural women access information, learn and manage their business data safely in a covid era.  The BD-KIT contains a mobile device, hardcopy Finance Tracker tool, and other resources which are tailored to their needs.

The BD-KIT tools help both educated and uneducated women leading MSMEs in rural communities understand and manage their business financial records seamlessly without supervision, thereby creating track-able and authentic records to facilitate scale-up, access new markets and expand trade opportunities. Our learning resources such as audio and video courses on basic business skills have been uploaded into our Web APP and are preinstalled into the OLEJU E-learning Tablet device distributed to entrepreneurs in our BD-KIT. making our solution user-friendly for rural communities towards solving their major digital /finance related problems. The OLEJU solution utilizes an all-encompassing approach to address gender inequality, financial exclusion and open up global business opportunities for women in Micros, Small and Medium  Enterprises (MSMEs).

IMPACT JOURNEY

In the last 5 years we have worked closely with over 3,000 women leading micro and small enterprises (women champions), and40% of these women have recorded an increase in revenue/sales margins between 10% - 40% respectively, while 30% have been able to access finances from formal financial institutions amounting to $275,000 collectively, leading to significant growth and scale of rural women led businesses in our host communities.

The OLEJU project’s success hinges on our approach that places rural women as key drivers of impact using technological innovations. We build on existing social capital in marginalized communities by training and equipping community champions (women leaders of savings groups) with Electronic Tablet Devices, preinstalled with offline modules, audios and videos of all our resources and a hardcopy of our Business Development Toolkit, and these champions in turn provide local support to all women in their communities. Therefore, ensuring women in marginalized communities can maximize our resources to access digital and financial opportunities.

FUTURE SCALE IMPACT PLANS

Over the next 3 years, we are working towards bridging existing digital and financial inclusion gaps for rural women led MSME’s in more communities across Nigeria and Africa by strategically deploying our solution in the most remote communities in need  .

We will onboard 6,000 Local Women to lead change in their local communities as economic development champions. Equip the 6000 champions with digital tablets and BDKIT to scale down the training to 288,000 women led SME’s owners leveraging digital tools. Facilitate practical finance literacy training, in rural communities: leveraging 6,000 local savings group leaders to provide on-going support to 16 women each annually, amounting to 288,000 rural women direct beneficiaries in 3 years.

We are looking to build strategic partnerships with cooperation’s, financial institutions and related organizations to create access to partnerships, networks and finance in form of grants, low/non-interest loans, collateral free loans and other services for 288,000 rural women in 3 years.

Above all, we are grateful to our previous partner, donors, team and volunteers, who have worked diligently towards achieving these results. We look forward to welcoming more.