Victory is Ours! Women In FinTech Summit 2020

Besides Kanzu Money, innovations from E-Moments, Anchors, Affinity and Hack Girls were also acknowledged in the top 5, won a cash prize as well as the opportunity to be a part of a year-long incubation process where the technologies will be made ready for the market. Each of the participating teams consisted of a majority of women, had female leaders and could only consist of between 2 to 4 members. Joy Amanda, Mary Angella, Timothy Kasasa, the team that created Kanzu Money, were led by Patricia Atim.

With only 8% of leadership positions in the fintech space being occupied by women, there is an urgency to empower and connect professional women in financial technology and mentor the coming generations to join in as well.

Dr Maggie Kigozi, one of the keynote speakers at the Summit, championed education as the means of achieving this goal of digital and financial inclusivity. She said that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) should be taught in schools right from the get-go, and through till graduate level so that more and more of our population becomes digitally literate. She also added that the current global pandemic justifies the need for an aggressive ICT implementation strategy. It has highlighted both to government as well as the public, the innumerable advantages digitized companies and businesses have over the analogue ones.

The Hackathon and Summit were events put together by, HiPipo, to create financial solutions tailored to the specific needs of women. This idea was birthed after HiPipo, a company dedicated to fostering financial inclusion, realized the disparity between the percentage of women benefiting from the technology on the market right now and their male counterparts. Innocent Kawooya, the CEO at HiPipo commented that it is important to involve women in the process of creating technological solutions because it results in more accessible technologies that better serve the female population. A key demographic to service well, because, although they form only 30% of the total workforce, they consist of a 75% majority in the informal business sector. Consequently, they would benefit the most from technologies that are inclusive and would also provide the most reliable customer base.

HiPipo partnered with Crosslake Tech, ModusBox and Mojaloop Foundation to create this forum; described by Damali Ssali, a Trade Development Expert, as a pipeline, for more representative solutions. She applauded the effort to get women involved right from the stage of conception and hoped that this would continue through to the development and roll-out stages. She even commented that companies that include women in their creative processes as well as in senior management positions are not just doing the right thing, but also the more profitable one.