ZIMBABWE and the United Kingdom have partnered in a programme that is expected to assist women and youths who are affected by high levels of unemployment and socio-cultural constraints across the country.
Speaking during the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office-Zimbabwe Agricultural Development Trust (ZADT) signing ceremony in Harare last week, Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe deputy governor Jesimen Chipika said Zimbabwean youths were also affected by low levels of financial inclusion while being denied the opportunity to show what they are capable of achieving.
The signing ceremony was held together with the launch of the Creating Adaptive Unique Systems for Access to Finance for Women and Youth (Causeway) project.
Chipika said women, who constitute over 52% of the population, were financially excluded due to socio-cultural constraints and high levels of financial illiteracy.
She added that the central bank had championed the development and implementation of second phase of the National Financial Strategy to broaden the uptake and usage of financial services and products to foster sustainable and inclusive economic development.
This had led to ZADT working with the UK embassy and RBZ under the Causeway initiative to support women and youth-led agro-enterprises in the country.
The Causeway, a three-year project founded last year in June and expecteded to run until the end of May 2026, was designed to enhance access to finance for youth and women in peri-urban and rural areas with low level skills, financial literacy and lack market linkages and markets while empowering them to implement income-generating projects that improve household incomes and food security.
“My appreciation goes to the British embassy in Zimbabwe for responding to the call for support and provide funds to ZADT to enable them capacitate the smallholder farming sector and micro, small and medium agro-enterprises,” Chipika said.
She said the RBZ was committed to developing policies and financial infrastructure that promote financial institutions to provide inclusive services for the agricultural sector and particularly the rural communities.
The UK embassy development director and deputy ambassador Joanne Abbot said the partnership targets women and youth in agriculture ensuring inclusive growth to promote sustainable livelihoods, creating wealth, employment and facilitating gender equality.
She said the embassy had a range of partnerships and tools to support inclusive economic growth agenda in Zimbabwe.
“Our partnership with ZADT brings in a new angle of sustainable approach to financial sector development. The facility seeks to support growth-oriented women and youth-led businesses through financial institutions as a revolving loan facility,” Abbot said.
She called on financial institutions to utilise the revolving loan fund to grow green businesses in Zimbabwe while creating employment and improving livelihoods.
ZADT chief executive Godfrey Chinoera said the project capacitates the youth aged between 18 to 35 and women between 36 to 65 through provision of business development services to access finance from financial institutions.
He said the project has benefited more than 4 000 out of a target of 11 000 women and youth who have been trained to access finance.