Webinar Series: Unlocking Women's Financial Inclusion in Africa

Alicia Torné | Director, Afriqinsights

Alicia Torné is a director at Afriqinsights, bringing extensive international exposure and a broad experience in Management Consulting across Sub-Saharan Africa, South and Central America and Europe. Some of her recent work in Africa has focused on providing data, insights and actionable recommendations for decision makers to bridge the knowledge gap in the cross-cutting sectors of Financial Inclusion and DFS - which hold a tremendous power to make a decisive impact on people’s livelihoods and wellbeing.

Buddy Bukuru | Financial Sector Specialist, CGAP

Buddy Buruku is a digital financial services (DFS) adviser based in Ghana where she is CGAP’s in-country lead. Ms. Buruku works on the use of DFS to drive Ghana’s cash-lite agenda and on DFS market development as a tool for financial inclusion. She specializes in the digitization of payments in agriculture and in the generation of national data on the status of financial inclusion. Insights from this work are being used by the central bank, the Ministry of Finance, and industry to promote DFS.

Esther Dassanou | Manager, Affirmative Action for Women in Africa

Esther Dassanou currently serves as the manager of the Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa at the African Development Bank but was previously with the International Finance Corporation responsible for mainstreaming gender in IFC's Africa MSME program. She also previously worked at the Corporate Council on Africa focused on increasing trade linkages between U.S. and African companies and identifying finance mechanisms for African SMEs.

Clarissa Kudowor | Assistant Director, Bank of Ghana

Clarissa Kudowor is an assistant director at Bank of Ghana with over 25 years of experience in central banking. She is also a fellow at the Fletcher Leadership School for Financial Inclusion. She has served as the co-chair and chairman of the Digital Financial Services Working Group (DFSWG) of the Alliance for Financial Inclusion and is currently the gender focal point for the DFSWG.

Mercy Munoni | Assistant Director, Ministry of Finance, Zambia

Mercy Munoni is currently the assistant director in the Ministry of Finance, Zambia where she covers financial sector policies and management. Previously she worked with the World Bank Group as a financial sector specialist and also in Zambia's Ministry of Commerce, Trade and Industry.

Chernay Johnson | Engagement Manager, Cenfri

Chernay Johnson is an engagement manager in the Digital World team of Cenfri. She concurrently serves as a Governance Committee Member of the Bureau for Economic Research (BER) in a non-remunerative capacity. Prior to joining Cenfri, Chernay worked as a professional economist at the South African Reserve Bank (SARB), Credit Suisse Securities, and spent time consulting on a strategic capital-markets project as a visiting researcher to the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) and Capital Markets Cooperative Research Centre (CMCRC) in Sydney. In recognition of her impactful economic research on sub-Saharan Africa, the Financial Mail ranked her as one of the top three young analysts in South Africa in 2016.

Sandra Orgu | Partnerships Manager, W Initiative, Access Bank, Nigeria

Sandra Orgu is the partnerships manager for the W Initiative, Access Bank Nigeria. The W initiative is a blend of existing banking products and services bundled to effectively meet the present-day financial and lifestyle needs of women in identified sub-segments, as well as provide them with a complete and rewarding banking experience. Ms. Orgu also has a background in public relations and journalism.

Carmia Norton | Head of Customer Success, JUMO, South Africa

Carmia Lureman-Norton is a customer experience professional (CCXP) who works with high-growth businesses to build customer capabilities for scale. She has over 10 years’ experience building customer-centered competencies and operations in some of South Africa’s most successful scale-ups. Carmia developed the CRM programmes, customer support and experience operations for leading brands across diverse industries, including finance and retail. Having experienced first-hand the ability of tech-enabled businesses to rapidly build and grow solutions to societal problems, she’s excited about the opportunities at JUMO to reimagine the delivery of financial services in challenging customer contexts.

Steve Shema |  CEO, Exuus, Rwanda

Steve Shema is the founder and CEO of Exuus Ltd. As the CEO of Exuus, Shema coordinated the first ever countrywide survey on saving groups also known as VSLAs (Village Savings and Loan Associations) in Rwanda in partnership with the Central Bank (BNR), the Ministry of Finance and Access to Finance Rwanda. The findings of the survey informed the creation of SAVE, a digital platform for saving groups which provides a digital and decentralized ledger to SGs members. SAVE is currently being used by over 35,000 users in Rwanda and averaging more than $10,000 in monthly savings. Currently, Steve is busy working on scaling-up SAVE in Rwanda and beyond with a target to hit 1 million saving groups by 2023 across the sub-Saharan Africa.

Emmanuel Akin-Awokoya, CEO, InvestXD, Ghana

Emmanuel Akin-Awokoya, the co-founder of InvestXD/Noni, is dedicated to building technology that promotes financial inclusion, Internet accessibility, improved educational opportunities, and economic wealth. Selected as a “Top 50 Innovators” at the 2018 African Innovation Summit, he is a graduate of the MEST Africa accelerator program for tech entrepreneurs and has an extensive background in telecommunications and engineering, including work with MTN Nigeria and Huawei Technology Limited. He is a member of Multinational Internet and Telecommunication organizations such as ICANN, ISOC, IETF, CTO, and IEEE and contributes to the standardization of the Internet. InvestXD won the second edition of the Data4FI Hackathon.