Former first lady and Mozambican education minister Graça Machel’s advocacy work in women’s financial inclusion will not extend to a return to active mainstream politics. She was speaking exclusively to Independent Newspapers on the edges of the African Development Bank’s Women’s Economic Summit in Lusaka, Zambia, on Friday.

On Friday she revealed research carried out by her foundation on the provision of capital to women entrepreneurs in Africa. The Machel Trust - through its advocacy group, New Faces, New Voices - studied women’s agricultural co-operatives in the former first lady’s home country of Mozambique as well as Zambia, where the summit is taking place.