Closing the Gender Leadership Gap : CRDB - Investing In Women To Increase Competitiveness

There is a strong business case for attracting and retaining more women in the financial sector from the board to the workforce. Women contribute to enhanced profitability, innovation, and risk management. Over the course of two decades, numerous studies have been undertaken by investors, corporate governance organizations, consultants, and financial institutions all over the world, which have found "a positive association between board diversity and company performance, investor protection, and/or enhanced decision making” (Zecca 2021). In April 2019, CRDB, a longstanding IFC investment and advisory client, joined the IFC-led Finance2Equal initiative. The program aims to increase women's participation in the financial sector as leaders, employees, customers, and entrepreneurs, by expanding women's access to financial services and strengthening career opportunities. Under the initiative, IFC and CRDB co-sponsored a training program to help the bank reduce its gender gap in leadership by preparing women for senior positions. The objective of the training was to enhance CRDB's pipeline of future women leaders. This training was designed to encourage more women to apply for senior roles at CRDB, and in Tanzania's financial sector, as a whole (IFC 2020)