Women Development Fund, a solution to women empowerment?

This research study sought to evaluate whether beneficiaries to the Women Development Fund have become economically and socially empowered as a result of this credit facility; evaluate how different categories of women in Kadoma benefit from the Women Development Fund; investigate the enabling and constraining factors to the empowerment of women and provide information that may be used for policy and legislative review on microfinance and the empowerment of women. Findings from this research study point to a possible increase in economic and social empowerment of clients to the WDF. Findings also revealed that government policies such as the land reform and indigenisation laws provide opportunities for women to succeed in their businesses. However, one of the major constraints faced by clients identified in this research study is that women clients lack adequate skills to run their businesses.
Based on findings from this research study, the following recommendations were made: decentralization of services; ensure participation of poor women; increase loan repayment period; increase loan amount; reduce loan waiting period; and offer non-financial services. Further studies may include an investigation into the way in which Women Development Fund impacts on various types of businesses run by women, and also how it impacts on other dimensions of empowerment, such as political empowerment.

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