UK
Bridging the Financial Literacy Gap
8-9 July 2022
The hackathon “Bridging the Financial Literacy Gap” was co-hosted by GSMA and EY in partnership with the Bloomsbury Institute London and the Commonwealth Businesswomen Network on 8-9 July 2022 at the EY London offices with 16 participants.
Mobile money and digital financial services can improve financial inclusion for women, increase their economic independence and strengthen their role as financial decision-makers. Despite significant gains in mobile-led financial inclusion over the last decade, women still have lower access and use of mobile money and digital financial services compared to men. This is due to a variety of reasons, including lack of awareness, not owning a mobile phone and low literacy, digital and financial skills.
Ensuring that women can access and use mobile money and digital financial services on par with men will bring benefits to individual women and their households, as well as to businesses and the economy while also contributing to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. Addressing women’s lower levels of financial literacy is an important step in realizing these ambitions.
Winning team & solution:
Amwali – a mobile app educates women on income, emergency fund and community rebuilding to support their financial journey targeting specifically women in post conflict areas, and envisioned to start with women based in Iraq eventually expanding to the Middle East.
© Linda Sarfo Gyamfi (Product Marketing Manager, Google), Kothar Rabbani (Bsc Cybersecurity & Digital Forensics Student , Middlesex University), Duha Kasim (Student, Ada National College for Digital Skills) and Hawra Milani (Director, The Code People)
The Amwali mobile app educates women on income, emergency fund and community rebuilding to support their financial journey. It targets specifically women in post conflict areas, and it is envisioned to start with women based in Iraq eventually expanding to the Middle East.
This accessible platform enables women to build their financial literacy whilst gaining access to community and investment:
- Low Barrier Educational Videos: The app leverages animated videos to educate women about finances (specifically income generation and emergency fund rebuilding). E.g.: loans, revenue and sales, business finances and emergency funds
- Community Digital Savings Pot: The app will also connect women to their community through digital savings pot. This groups women, notifies community for contribution, and distributes upon agreement. Partnerships to enable in-person community events
- Diaspora Mentoring and Investment: Future growth plan involves matching women on the ground with those in the diaspora abroad for mentoring and small business investment
This proposal identified a unique market opportunity as it:
- targets a specific region and its tech ecosystem,
- closes a gap in the current market,
- offers low language barrier videos,
- creates an opportunity for MENA community digital savings app,
- addresses key challenges of income generation, emergency funds building and access to financing,
- has a huge opportunity for impact as this market is highly overlooked and underserved.
Testimonials from winning team members:
“Best thing about building a network through these hackathons is that you are building it with like-minded people. If you stay in touch with five to seven people from the forty people you met, you can help them, and they can help you. “
“Such events create an opportunity to meet a lot of people from different backgrounds”.
