Jennifer Riria, banking chief: Financial system still excludes women

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1:52If you're not a little bit afraid, then you're not paying attention. We have never seen a people so united. Do not make that boat crossing. Do not make that journey. Being born in America, feeling American, having people treat me like I'm not. We're more popular than populism. For this interview, I spoke to the African business leader, Dr. Jennifer RiRira, over Zoom while she was in Nairobi. Having started life in a poor rural village in Kenya, Dr. Ririra worked her way up to develop and run one of the biggest microfinance institutions for women in Africa. Microfinance is a banking service providing small loans and more to people with low income who might lack access to traditional banking.

2:38It's aimed at fostering self-sufficiency, financial education and entrepreneurship in developing areas. Her focus, however, is not limited to finance alone. She's also utilised experience from a career which has included teaching at university and consulting for UNICEF, the UN Children's Aid Agency, in order to progress women's development in education and leadership. My vision drove me to desire to be able to serve women in a different way, to deal with women and leadership, with girls excelling in education, not getting married so early to stop FGM, genital mutilation. And then we needed to think of women and peace because we felt that that's one of the areas we need to deal with, which is not financial.

3:33Welcome to the interview from the BBC World Service with Dr. Jennifer Riwira. I grew up in a village like any other African little girl in the village, fetching water and firewood, putting in the kettle and the sheep in the evening, taking care of the baby, looking in support of mother, and going to school in the village. It was not an easy child would live in a village that was actually poor. All I knew when I was very little, meaning five, six, seven, even up to ten years, is that I wanted to get away from the village. I hated to see my mother suffer. It's only later, in high school, and actually actualized at the university, that I knew it was not my mother only.

4:31It was about that girl in the village. It was about that woman in the village receiving beatings when, you know, food is not ready on time. I knew it was not my mother only at that time. It was other women. And that is what shaped what I am today, that I needed to get away. To begin with, I thought it's my mom. I wanted to get away from all that suffering. But I realized it is the village woman. It is the village poor girl that needs to get away. that needs to have a different type of life. Now, a major turning point for you was at the end of high school when you became a young mother. Can you tell me about that time?

5:12That was not planned. You know, that was not planned. It was just the stupidity of a teenager enjoying a teenage and thinking that's how things should be. You have a boyfriend, you are happy with it, and there you get a baby. And then that was more difficult than I remember because my parents were stoned Presbyterians, Christians. And therefore, my having a baby as a teenager had no place in my family. My father was very bitter about it. My mother never said a word. But my father said, you need to get away. And I got away. I went away. I went to my sister. My sister upheld me until I went to school.

6:03And I took my baby with me to the university, Dar es Salaam University, and got support from friends in Tanzania. And got friends from my late sister. One of my late sisters was an anchor for me until I completed my university. And I took my baby with me to UK for my master's. It was also very, very difficult to be in a foreign country with a baby with meager resources. Wherever I went, I found very kind people who even fanned us when we didn't have any food with my child until I finished my university. It's really amazing that you kept up your education while rearing a child. It's not easy. Is there any point that you thought to yourself, I don't want to do this anymore.

6:52I want the easy way out. I can't do this. I needed to do my education because I wouldn't have managed to do anything else without education. So I was bent on completing my education. I went to Daslam. It was very difficult. A very young baby, I've lectures to go to, I have homework to do. And one time I put my baby on my back and I intended to jump into the swimming pool. And I stood by the edge of the swimming pool and I wanted to jump in. But at that time, the baby on my back, tied on my back, said, Mum. And I realised I can't do this. Tell me about your early professional life, because you didn't start in banking.

7:34Now I've completed my university, first degree. When I came back, those days, getting jobs was not difficult because government officials came to school, came to the university. and we already knew where you were going to work before you got out of the university. So when you came out just to report, I reported to a boys school. That's why I was sent. Before I left for my diploma education in England, where I did diploma and then I did my master's, I studied for my diploma in England. When I came back, that's when I then registered for a PhD in women education and development. That's how I began my career.

8:22After a little while, not a little while, a good while, I taught at the university for 10 years. The 11th year, I went on sabbatical and joined UNICEF as a full-time consultant on women education for child survival. And when I was there, I worked with the women to see the relationship between education for women and survival for children. And that ran me into working with women on small businesses for them to make money and to learn how to do a few things like, you know, saving and so forth and so on, for them to be able to look after the children better. So just talk us through exactly how that works.

9:09Like who would be coming to you looking for money and how would you make the decision to give it to them or not give it to them? In 1975, women were totally excluded from financial services. So one of the major resolutions of that committee from the first UN conference on women was that there is need for women to access resources to be able to articulate their lives in financial matters. So countries went back, people went back, and I wasn't part of that. There's a woman now who was part of that group that came back. And on her desk, a few women sat around that table and they said, OK, let's all contribute a little bit of money.

9:55And that little bit of money was like$20,$5,$1. And they got together and said, okay, we want to give a little bit of money to the women. And we want to train them in financial skills so that they can begin their own little businesses. That went on. Donors came in and supported that group. But because these were women who were working in their own businesses. They were Kaliya women. They only met the way women meet from book clubs, maybe at 5 o 'clock and so forth and so on. So when I came in, their institution died completely. After 10 years of having it as a club, it died. As a project of UNDP, I was recruited in to come and restart the Kenya Women Microfinance Institution.

10:51What we did was to make sure that we work with women, we bring women together in groups. And together, women in groups, we are to travel in the country. Women don't come to us. We went to the women, we went to the villages, we went to the markets and introduced and, you know, went through church, went through the government offices, the Ministry of Culture and Social Services. And said we need to meet women. So we were able to meet women. By wonder of both, women had their people here working with us. So we began reorganizing and getting women to get into groups. And into groups we began training them.

11:39Training them with little money. Little money as 30 dollars. For them to do something small like bake chapachi. Or madazi. and sell and resell and save. And then we taught them the art of saving. You have to save. And it was compulsory for them to save. So we, through talking to them, through training them, the word spread around. Then every year we organized their coming into Nairobi. Some of them are never set a foot in Nairobi. So it was great every year for them to come to Nairobi to meet me and meet other women, but this time the institution was growing. And meet other directors who joined me so that we can have a day talking about women and businesses.

12:33That went like, you know, was difficult, but we went around the country. We set foot in 45 counties out of 47. And the The women repaid their loans. The loans were you will get$30. If you repay, we will give you$50. If you pay, we'll give you$75. If we will pay, we'll give you$100. Like that, it was incremental. But the women had to prove that they can repay. Now, remember, nobody now at that point in time, in early 90s, nobody's thinking a woman can borrow a loan in this country and repay. Women were not supposed to be creditworthy. So one of the things we had to do was big campaigns of, you know, with the slogans, which later the banks picked up.

13:25Slogans like, poor people are unbankable. We began by women are unbankable. Then poor women are unbankable. Then poor people are unbankable. And banks took that up, you know, later on. We opened, we actually opened the banking halls for women.

13:46You're listening to the interview from the BBC World Service.

14:13show revenue, well, that's a not-so-great conversation with the CFO. LinkedIn has a word for that. Bull spend. Now you can invest in what looks good to your CFO. LinkedIn ads generates the highest ROAS of all major ad networks. You'll reach the right buyers because you can target by company, industry, job title, and more. So cut the bull spend. Advertise on LinkedIn, the network that works for you. Spend$250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a 250 credit for the next one. Just go to linkedin.com slash broadcast. That's linkedin.com slash broadcast. Terms and conditions apply. She was the sister who went unnoticed.

15:01A daffodil might look plain next to a lily, but on its own, there is much to be admired. Now, her greatest chapter is yet to come. The most important thing is to be yourself. From the world of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice comes a new Britbox original drama. Mary, do you will flourish? Based on the best-selling novel The Other Bennett Sister, now streaming only on Britbox. Watch for the free trial at Britbox.com. My conversation with Dr. Jennifer RiRiRi left me struck by how understated she is. She was also incredibly warm, easy to talk to and very open about her own struggles in a way that felt genuinely vulnerable.

15:46Here is a woman who helped build one of Africa's most significant microfinance institutions. And yet there's no grand founder mythology in the way she tells her story. She speaks calmly and matter of factly. While they're describing taking her baby with her to the UK to study, we're trying to convince people that poor rural women were worth lending to. But beneath that cam, there's unmistakable steel. OK, let's return to my conversation with Dr Jennifer Riwira. Do you remember the first woman you ever lent money to and what she did with it? You'll be surprised. I would put 50 ,000 shillings in my bag and travel to the village.

16:31That time, to begin with, in 1991, I was the MD, I was the cleaner, I was the accountant, I was everything. I opened the office and closed the office. 1992, I got one officer. We didn't have any money to do a bit of accounting. I would take money and go and sit at a market. The first woman I gave a loan to in Karatina, in Nyeri, she didn't repay. She was my friend, so she said, you know, a woman came and gave me money. And she never repaid. No. You're still looking for the money. The second one I gave, I think repaid once. But this time, I'd already hired one now, one young girl from a cooperative college to help me now to lend.

17:28That's when now we began sitting down and putting the processes in place. I had also gotten a few staff to be able to assist in going to lend instead of me going. Because when I went there, they looked at me as their friend. They never saw me as a lender. But when the young people came in aggressively, they already trained what to do, what to say. That made a big difference. And the institution grew cell by cell. Because when we went into an area, we made sure that the women are repaying their loans 100 % before we opened another office. That way, we didn't have any repayment issues at all. Our repayment rate for over 10 years was 100 % repayment rate.

18:21It was interesting that the women really, you know, this is the first time they are getting some money. So it was for them, it was very good. So this is how we did it until we covered the entire country. By the time I moved on and let someone else run it as a bank, we had to transform into a microfinance bank now. That is 2009. We were working with all 45 counties with over 1 million clients, women. And by this time, women learned how to open accounts in the banks and so forth and so on. It's really amazing. And it grew and grew from then, didn't it? You know, it grew across countries. It grew in office size and staff size.

19:11Yeah, it grew. We had branches all over. By the time I handed the bank over, because now my vision now drove me to desire to work on another institution now, to work on the holding company, to be able to serve women in a different way. We wanted to deal with women and leadership. We wanted to deal with girls exhaling in education, not getting married so early to stop FGM, genital mutilation. That's one of them, girls' education. And then we needed to think of women and peace because we felt that that's one of the areas we need to deal with, which is not financial, but women and peace. Peace is very important in this country and in development.

20:01And we also were working now on women to join political arena. That is why we now in 2018, another dream came on that the women holding company now can establish another institution, the Democracy Trust Fund. The Democrat Trust Fund was supposed to be the arm of Kenya Women Holdings that deals with political leadership and political aspects of the programming for the institution. To make sure we have a difference between, we differentiate between programming for development and programming for leadership and politics, not to mix politics with development matters. Even today, millions of women across Africa, they do remain outside the formal financial system.

20:58And we've got numbers from the World Bank's global index. So it says around 49 % of women in sub-Saharan Africa do not have a bank account compared with 38 % of men. In your opinion, why does this gap persist? Yeah, women continue to be outside the financial system. That's why financial inclusion has become the cliche word. And I'm calling it the cliche word because a lot of people don't pay a lot of attention after they say that. Most of Africa is rural, although urbanization is taking root now. The financial services, the financial systems that deliver financial services to women are still eluding women.

21:44Right now, digital banking and all the other FinTech systems will be where the ICT infrastructure is. Now you go to some parts in this country and other countries in Africa where I've traveled and you find the infrastructure is so poor. So even FinTech, you know, will not reach women. And, you know, most people living in rural areas consistently are women, majority of women, because they are confined in their homes. So that, you know, access becomes a very big problem. And women will continue because now we are going, we are going technology. And if women can't access because there is no, you know, Wi-Fi there, the systems are not there.

22:41then povert also because you can have a router passing through your gate but a woman has to think do I want a phone or do I want to save that money to feed my children So as banking advances in technology it could risk leaving some women behind. Yes, according to Women's World Banking there is a divide of 9 % women behind men, you know, accessing technology. And I think it's more than that as far as I'm concerned, because the kind of gadgets that a woman can afford, even now in Kenya, is most of the women, not all of them, is the one that costs, you know,$1 ,000,$2 ,000. What technology companies are trying to do now, and I hope they can do it faster, is to get those small telephones that are not complicated for women to have, because education also is there.

23:43So you might have technology and you can't operate it. There are so many things that operate against women in terms of access to financial services. You have helped so many women with microfinance, and it is promoted as a solution for women. But sometimes there are critics, and they argue that microfinance actually risks trapping women and cycles of debt rather than empowering them. What would you say to that? That question has been raised, you know, with me, not only here, but everywhere. It is a very complicated question in the sense that disbursement alone, it demands that it has to be repaid.

24:24Now, what happens is that when training, information, and I'm not saying class schooling, You know, information, access to information that will enable women to realize that if I overborrow and the systems are not there to stop a woman from overborrowing, when I sat on day to day lending to women, we made sure that if a woman is alone, she doesn't get another one. There is need for any institution to keep close to their clients, giving them information so that they understand the danger of overborrowing. It is the overborrowing that kills clients and its lack of proper management of the loans that they get.

25:16I think the systems became lax. to begin with, when the institutions were not many, microfinance institutions were not many, we were able to sit with our women in these meetings, I'm telling you, I call every year, and tell the women, don't borrow more than one loan. If you borrow from us, don't borrow from anyone else. So what the women do is they go borrow from another institution, come and pay you, and take another loan. So you sit there, you are very happy. they have repaid you, but you don't know they're indebted to three, four others. So that really is the problem. It's the women not understanding and the knowledge is not there for them to understand.

26:00And then, of course, women also, once we began providing them with loans, and I say this with a tongue in my cheek, this is where the gender question comes in. They took on so much in the family way, in the family setting, and their husbands relaxed. So women, the imbalance, the gender workload, which also is financial load, increased for women as we continued to give them access to financial services. But what is the worst evil? Not to give them? I don't think so.

26:43Thank you for listening to the interview. If you enjoyed this conversation, you can find many more episodes of The Interview wherever you get your BBC podcasts, including ones with Botswana's president Duma Boko, entrepreneur Emma Greed and astronaut Jeremy Hansen. Until next time, bye for now.

27:16credible at first, but didn't live up to the hype. Like those$5 roses at a gas station, or a second-hand piece of technology that breaks in the first 10 minutes. Marketers know that feeling. We optimize for the numbers that look great, impressions, reach, and reacts. But when they don't show revenue, well, that's a not-so-great conversation with the CFO. LinkedIn has a word for that. Bull spend. Now you can invest in what looks good to your CFO. LinkedIn ads generates the highest ROAS of all major ad networks. You'll reach the right buyers because you can target by company, industry, job title and more.

27:57So cut the bull spend. Advertise on LinkedIn, the network that works for you. Spend$250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a 250 credit for the next one. Just go to linkedin.com slash broadcast. That's linkedin.com slash broadcast. terms and conditions apply she was the sister who went unnoticed a daffodil might look plain next to a lily but on its own there is much to be admired now her greatest chapter is yet to come the most important thing is to be yourself from the world of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice comes a new Britbox original drama Mary, you will flourish based on the best-selling novel The Other Bennett Sister now streaming only on Britbox Watch for the free trial at BritBox.com.