Internet and finance to power women entrepreneurs
Irene Ntuison, Afrifarms (left) and Jari Ala-Ruona, Aion (right)
Only 30% of Africans have a smartphone. The cost of a smartphone is often equivalent to a full month or half a month all earnings, further data costs are expensive as well. The backbone of Africa's economy and well being are women who spend more than 80% of their earnings on family and the community. By enabling women entrepreneurs access to credit and a smartphone the economic opportunities increase, as do the access to life-changing information related to health, education and civic participation.
Across Africa, more than 70% of the economy is agricultural, informal and predominantly small scale and run by self-employed people. A transformative entrepreneurship force is created when empowering content, financial literacy and on the ground digital skills training meets the vast power of the informal networks of the women. By working together in cooperatives and savings and loans groups the lives and opportunities are improved.
Nordic-African partnership
Irene Ntuision of Cameroon's Afrifarms and Jari Ala-Ruona of Finland's Aion Sigma join forces to bring digital economic empowerment to Cameroonian women. They first met at Empower Africa event on March 3rd, 2020. Now 2 months later the first group of 5 women entrepreneurs in Afrifarms network is going to get financed smartphones with solar charging stations.
In order to scale the program fast, the two are taking part in Ambitious Africa Dealroom events in order to find new partners across the continent. Aion Sigma has also launched a new service called smartphones4good.com - where the abundance of hundreds of millions of used smartphones from people's homes gets a new life to empower African women entrepreneurs.
Afrifarms is an agro organic company that undertakes the production, marketing, and distribution of organic foods in wholesale and bulk retail. Aion Sigma enables smart loans to power regenerative economy, fair finance and internet for all.
