Banking on Her Belief: NCBA’s AFAWA Partnership Unlocks Growth for Women Enterprises

As the pre-season showers signal the onset of the long rains across Kenya, a familiar rhythm returns to the countryside. Fields soften, seedlings are prepared, and anticipation fills the air. Across Kenya’s farms, aggregation centers and processing facilities, women are positioning themselves to take full advantage of the planting season.

These women form the backbone of a sector that feeds the nation. They sustain rural households, power local economies, and safeguard food security not only in Kenya but across Africa. Yet their participation in the higher-value segments of the agri-food ecosystem is often constrained.

For many, the challenge is not ambition, innovation, or market demand. It is access to affordable finance, structured markets, formalization pathways, and the technical support required to scale sustainably. As a result, businesses with robust growth potential stall before they reach scale.

The outcome is not merely individual stagnation; it is losing productivity within one of the country’s most strategic sectors.

Understanding this gross economic impact, last year, NCBA sharpened its focus on women operating across the agri-food value chain by partnering with the African Guarantee Fund under the Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa (AFAWA) initiative led by the African Development Bank Group.

The NCBA–AFAWA WSMEs Acceleration Program was designed with a simple but strategic objective: to move beyond conventional lending and build an ecosystem where women-owned agri-food enterprises can access finance, strengthen capacity and unlock markets in a structured way.

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This renewed partnership builds on the impact of the initial collaboration with the African Guarantee Fund in 2025, which unlocked over KES 17 billion in lending through a risk-sharing facility and reached more than 700 SMEs, while supporting over 7,000 jobs — including 2,200 opportunities for women.

Building on that foundation, the renewed programme, delivered under AFAWA, doubles lending capacity for women and youth entrepreneurs from KES 1.5 billion to KES 3 billion, targeting more than 80 women entrepreneurs across two cohorts. The initiative also aims to unlock USD 5 million in financing and create at least 300 new jobs, reinforcing the role of tailored finance in inclusive growth.

Since its launch in October last year, NCBA has facilitated over KES 747 million in loans to women-led enterprises, with a broader ambition to unlock USD 5 million in financing and support the creation of more than three hundred jobs.

Rather than viewing women-owned enterprises as high-risk segments, this partnership demonstrates that with the right support structures, these businesses represent high-potential growth opportunities.

Yet the significance of the programme lies not only in the capital deployed, but in how that capital is delivered.

Too often, promising businesses remain informal, unable to meet traditional lending requirements and locked out of the capital that could help them scale. The NCBA–AFAWA programme changes that narrative by de-risking women-owned enterprises through blended credit and partial guarantees, paired with mentorship and tailored business advisory support.

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It further creates a space for deeper engagement through conversations that stretch across agribusiness value chains, financial management, climate and market risk, special economic zone opportunities, and long-term strategic planning. The intention is not merely to extend credit, but to cultivate resilience and vision.

In doing so, the programme confronts both the financial and structural barriers that have long constrained growth. It is not merely about unlocking capital; it is about shaping women entrepreneurs who are future-ready, equipped to compete, adapt, and lead within an evolving economic landscape.

At its heart, the acceleration programme reflects a long-held conviction within NCBA: that meaningful transformation in the SME sector begins by empowering the very entrepreneurs who sustain it.

Through targeted mentorship and practical skills development, the bank is translating that belief into action. By channelling at least 30 per cent of its procurement spend to women and youth, the Group is deliberately widening access to opportunity and embedding inclusion into everyday economic activity.

For NCBA, investing in women in the agri-food sector is not charity. It is disciplined capital allocation informed by evidence, risk-sharing, and ecosystem support. Because when women, who form a substantial share of the agri-food sector’s workforce, gain access to finance, training and markets, the multiplier effects extend across households, communities, and supply chains.

For Kenya, the implications are particularly significant. Agriculture remains a key contributor to GDP, employment, and export earnings. Improving productivity and resilience within the agri-food sector has direct consequences for food security, inflation stability, and rural income growth.

As restricted land ownership, collateral limitations and informality continue to lock viable enterprises out of traditional lending systems, the need for intentional design becomes more urgent. Supporting women in agri-food requires an understanding of these lived realities from the outset, not as an afterthought, and not through products retrofitted at scale. Without solutions tailored to seasonal cash flow cycles, climate exposure, and value-chain dynamics, capital alone can fail to translate into sustained growth.

Banking on her belief, therefore, involves recognising that Kenya’s agri-food future will be shaped not only by rainfall patterns and commodity prices, but by how effectively institutions enable the women who power the value chain to scale, formalize, and compete.

As we celebrate progress in financial inclusion and confront the barriers that remain, one lesson remains clear: transformation happens when investment meets belief and when institutions invest intentionally in women’s potential.