Message from the President of EBID on International Women’s Day 2025

Each year on International Women’s Day, we celebrate women for their courage, determination and contributions to making the world a better place. However, this day also provides an opportunity to reflect on the current situation of women across the world and assess whether the living conditions for women have improved over time.

It is unfortunate to note that thirty years after the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, despite advancements in international legal frameworks to protect women’s rights, the statistics still paint a grim picture. In 2022, the UN Women organisation estimated that:

388 million women lived below the Extreme Poverty Line, which captures persons living on less than USD 2.15 per day. 1 in every 10 women in the world lives in extreme poverty. 8% of women living in extreme poverty are in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The theme for this year’s celebration, Accelerate Action, could not be timelier and more significant. As the effects of climate change, especially the threats to agricultural production and national industries, feed into the widening of the poverty gap, the call for all stakeholders to intensify their efforts at empowering women must be amplified.  In fact, ‘UN Women’ estimates that climate change will leave 236 million more women and girls hungry by 2030, twice as many as men (131 million).

It has also become increasingly clear that policies aimed at enabling women to join the economic sphere as producers and contributors are greatly beneficial and should be a core feature of policies for socio-economic development. In 2024, the World Bank stated that ending discriminatory laws and practices that prevent women from working or starting businesses could raise the global gross domestic product by more than 20%, which would double the rate of global growth over the next decade. This statistic supports the statement made by former American First Lady and Lawyer Michelle Obama that “No country can ever truly flourish if it stifles the potential of its women and deprives itself of the contributions of half its citizens”.

Development Finance Institutions have a key role to play in the fight for gender parity. To this end, EBID provides lines of credit dedicated to women-led enterprises to improve access to capital and support the expansion of their operations in various sectors. At the corporate level, the Bank continues to implement a dynamic Gender policy, giving priority to qualified female candidates in the hiring process as well as internal promotions; provision of periodic healthcare screenings and competitive childcare and maternity policies and we are committed to doing even more in line with our Strategy.

As I conclude may I take this opportunity to remind us all of crucial roles some women have played at the national, regional and international levels to support economic development and progress. Mention can be made of Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May, former Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom and Christine Lagarde, former Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and current President of the European Central Bank. In West Africa, we have Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the highly respected former Minister for Finance of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, who now serves as the Director General of the World Trade Organization (WTO). These women have set good examples for all to follow.

I would like to urge the women of EBID to rise to the challenge of making a profound impact not only in the Bank but at the highest level in order to contribute meaningfully to building legacies that will endure for many generations to come.

Happy International Women’s Day!