Egyptian women who constitute half of the population, represent tremendous economic potential, while contributing to only 22.5 percent of total labor force - offer an estimated credit demand of USD283 million among female-owned SMEs.

The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) has achieved major accomplishments towards building an inclusive financial system through introducing a number of initiatives to provide financially underserved households and female MSME owners with an opportunity to be part of the formal financial system. This has been achieved through working on a number of pillars that include:

• enabling the legal and regulatory framework conditions
• modernizing the financial infrastructure
• building a comprehensive gender-disaggregated data, complemented with the supply side data from financial institutions

View the case study for more in-depth insights into how CBE and national stakeholders have exerted substantial efforts to address gender and women’s financial exclusion.