The financial inclusion of the 140 million migrant women is essential to the global development discourse. Despite the strong presence of women on both the sending and receiving side of remittances, it is often implicitly assumed in research, policy, and innovation that remittance patterns are gender-neutral or gender-blind. Gender plays a significant role in migration and remittances—including who, when, where, why, and how people migrate; the amount and frequency of remittances sent and received (which in turn impacts costs); and how remittances are used and what financial resilience opportunities are created and leveraged as a result.
Over the last two years, UNCDF has worked with private sector partners globally, running innovation pilot projects that apply a gender lens with respect to digital remittance products and services. These partnerships have uncovered key gender insights that can be leveraged to inform gender-smart innovations and have directly reached nearly 150,800 women customers so far. The natural next step in this work is to expand beyond direct partnerships and mobilize knowledge sharing among development practitioners, policymakers, remittance customers, and remittance service providers. To drive scalable, sector-wide impact that leads to gender transformative outcomes in financial inclusion and resilience for migrants and their families, particularly migrant women and women recipients, UNCDF has established the Gender Collaborative for Remittances (Gender Colab). This Gender Colab connects key stakeholders in the remittance sector to share insights and experiences on remittance policy, research, and innovation, targeting and/or prioritizing migrant women and recipients.
This webinar—the first in a multi-part series under the Gender Colab in 2023—focused on understanding the gendered experience within South-South migration and remittances as experienced within Africa. About 70 percent of people migrating from Africa are moving within the African region. We will explore the experience of migrant women remittance senders and women remittance recipients as customers in Africa, gaining a deeper understanding of who they are as a customer group. Determinants of South-South migration within, and from or to African countries, the socio-economic dimensions (networks, income, gender, seasonal movement, etc.), and the impact of the global crises, i.e., the COVID pandemic, on remittance trends associated with South-South migration within Africa will be discussed. By sharing our learnings, we can discover new insights towards migrant-centric and gender-smart improvements in financial inclusion for migrant women and women recipients.
Webinar participants
Moderator: Uloma Ogba, Lead Gender Specialist, UNCDF
Speakers:
- Sharon Welang, Director of MNO Network Expansion, MFS Africa
- Kaleo Nakazwe, Product Manager – Send, Flutterwave
- Babette Lind, Business Development and Marketing Manager, Ping Money
Duration: 90 minutes