Girls accounted for 53% of all microfinance beneficiaries in Egypt right through the primary quarter (Q1) of 2026, underscoring their rising function within the nation’s non-banking monetary sector and the significance of girls’s financial empowerment to sustainable building, in line with Islam Azzam, Chairperson of the Monetary Regulatory Authority (FRA).
Talking at a seminar on Monetary Inclusion and Sustainable Building, organised by way of the FRA in partnership with UN Girls, the Nationwide Council for Girls (NCW), the Eu Union and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Azzam stated that round 1.8 million girls benefited from microfinance right through the length. They accounted for roughly 45% of the sphere’s general remarkable financing portfolio, which reached EGP 74bn.
The development introduced in combination representatives from monetary establishments, building companions and mavens specialising in monetary inclusion and sustainable building.
Azzam stated monetary inclusion has developed past increasing get entry to to monetary products and services to turn out to be a key motive force of financial expansion and potency. Broader get entry to to suitable monetary services, he stated, allows other segments of society to enhance their residing requirements whilst supporting Egypt’s nationwide building objectives.
He added that the FRA continues to make stronger the legislative and regulatory framework governing non-banking monetary actions to extend get entry to to monetary products and services and inspire innovation in merchandise adapted to the wishes of various buyer teams, in particular girls, younger folks and citizens of underserved and faraway spaces.
Azzam wired that bettering monetary literacy stays some of the authority’s most sensible priorities, describing it as a cornerstone of a hit monetary inclusion. He stated the FRA is strengthening cooperation with home and global companions to put into effect programmes and projects geared toward elevating monetary consciousness, bettering people’ talent to make knowledgeable monetary selections, and extending public working out in their rights underneath related law and FRA laws.
He additionally highlighted the significance of cooperation with global establishments and building companions in shifting experience and adopting international perfect practices, in particular the ones evolved in rising markets, to toughen the ongoing building of Egypt’s non-banking monetary products and services sector.
The seminar opened with remarks by way of Rehab Taha, Assistant Chairperson of the FRA, and featured two panel discussions inspecting contemporary tendencies in monetary inclusion and the function of girls in advancing sustainable building, along shows showcasing a hit projects and case research.
A view of the seminar
Marwa Alam El Din, Officer-in-Fee of the UN Girls Egypt Nation Administrative center, stated that making an investment in girls’s financial empowerment is not just a social crucial but in addition a wise funding that drives inclusive expansion and sustainable building.
She famous that empowering girls is going past bettering person livelihoods, contributing as an alternative to more potent households, extra productive communities and expanded alternatives in training, healthcare, first rate paintings and financial participation.
Alam El Din highlighted the Tahwisha programme, carried out in partnership with the Nationwide Council for Girls and the Central Financial institution of Egypt (CBE), with toughen from the Eu Union and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, as a number one type for advancing virtual transformation and monetary inclusion in rural communities.
She defined that the programme allows girls to get entry to safe virtual monetary products and services whilst strengthening their monetary control, financial savings and entrepreneurial abilities.
She added that, amid accelerating virtual transformation and evolving financial demanding situations, there’s a rising want for leading edge financing answers that deal with girls’s explicit wishes whilst protective them from monetary exploitation and virtual violence. On this context, she described UN Girls’s partnership with the FRA as in particular vital in strengthening the regulatory framework and selling accountable finance.
The seminar additionally explored the sensible financial and social demanding situations dealing with building tasks and projects. Contributors exchanged reports and mentioned strategic approaches followed by way of financing establishments to extend girls’s financial empowerment, reply to evolving financing wishes, support governance frameworks and make sure compliance with lending necessities.
The development was once attended by way of representatives from the FRA, the FRA’s Regional Centre for Sustainable Finance, the Nationwide Council for Girls, UN Girls, the Egyptian Federation for Microfinance, the Micro, Small and Medium Undertaking Building Company (MSMEDA), in addition to monetary establishments, mavens and consultants.
