16.09.2015

10 questions answered by the UEM Council member Dr Victoria Kisyombe

Questions by Martina Pauly Dr Victoria Kisyombe (ELCT-ECD) is the founder of SELFINA in Tanzania and has been awarded the famous Global Leadership Award in 2014. Since 2012 she is a member of the UEM Council, before that she served UEM as financial advisor. Read the complete interview which she recently has given to the UEM audience in Germany. Mama Victoria, what have you done to receive this famous Global Leadership Award? First of all let me start by saying that Global Leadership Award is given by Vital Voices Global Partnership whose Founder is Hon. Hillary Clinton. The Vital Voices Global Leadership Awards honour and celebrate leaders around the world working to strengthen democracy, increase economic opportunity and protect human rights. Each year Vital Voices selects a distinguished group of international women to recognize for their leadership in the above mentioned areas. In 2014, I was one of five women from around the world that were selected to receive this award which was presented at the Kennedy Centre in Washington D.C.  Mine was on Global Leadership Award in the Economic Empowerment category. The President and CEO of Vital Voices, Alyse Nelson wrote this to me after I had been selected for GLA 2014:  "Your unyielding commitment to the economic empowerment of women in Tanzania has had an enormous transformative impact on your community and country. Your vision and innovative spirit set you apart as a global role model, and the significance of your work will be felt for generations to come." I thank the Almighty Lord for giving this opportunity. I have pioneered micro-leasing as a solution to increasing women's access to finance using the leased asset as the collateral. This unique micro-leasing model which I have pioneered in my country has generated praise beyond Tanzania. Apart from the recent Global Leadership Award, I have also been recognized by the IFC/World Bank (2007), World Economic Forum (Awarded Africa Social Entrepreneur for the year 2010), The International Alliance for Women (TIAW Award 2009), Woman of Determination Award (in 2011 during 50 years of Tanzania’s independence). I give all glory and honor to the Lord who has made all this possible. I have dedicated these Awards to all the women that I have I have been called to serve, support and assist and to my children who have stood by me all the time. How does your organisation SELFINA exactly work? SERO Lease and Finance Limited (SELFINA) is a company I founded in 2002 to specifically address the economic and social challenges that inhibit women, particularly poor women in remote or disadvantaged communities, from accessing financing and other business support services. SELFINA’s mission is “to increase the income and employment of poor women in Tanzania by helping them develop sustainable businesses by providing access to micro-leasing services and business training”. While Tanzania’s legal environment technically provides equal rights to all irrespective of gender, social customs and traditions make it difficult for women to own land and other assets.  As a result, financial institutions do not consider women as being creditworthy, which restricts their access to financial services and marginalizes them in the productive economy. The economic vulnerability, complimented by the aforementioned social values, propagates the marginalization of women in the decision-making process within their families and communities.  SELFINA seeks to address this challenge by pioneering micro-leasing as an effective and practical way to provide credit to women in Tanzania.  Its broad mission is to extend financial services to the poor and disadvantaged groups in the society, particularly those engaged in agriculture in rural areas. SELFINA’s micro-leasing services are complemented by education and awareness programs among women to create synergy and promote a bigger social impact amongst the clientele. How SELFINA works:  SELFINA helps women build and grow value-creating, sustainable businesses by enabling them to acquire equipment for business on lease, and small working capital loans through a sale and leaseback facility. Through leasing, SELFINA brings financial relief to small businesses that would have no collateral for standard loans from formal financial institutions and helps avoid tying up working capital in fixed assets. Specifically, SELFINA’s business consists of: (a) Financial Leases (approximately 60% of total): a customer pays monthly instalments (typically 10 months) to gradually acquire an asset. (b) Sales and Leaseback (approximately 40%): a recurring customer, who has obtained equipment through a prior lease with SELFINA, has the option to sell the equipment back to SELFINA. These customers usually need working capital for their businesses, such as raw materials or money to hire employees.  They then pay SELFINA a monthly instalment to acquire the asset back, while concurrently using it in the course of their business. Leasing is different from, and more advantageous for women than, traditional micro-credit because leases are linked to specific assets and therefore not as vulnerable to expropriation.  It allows women to acquire productive assets gradually over time and use the assets to grow their businesses and earn revenue.  When leases are complete, the assets become property of the women and can then be used as collateral for subsequent loans. Furthermore, leasing has lower delinquency rates compared to traditional lending.  How many women has SELFINA supported in the past? And have you ever favoured a special project? Starting from a very humble beginning, SELFINA has reached out to more than 25,000 women with lease finance worth US$ 16 million. More than 125,000 jobs have been created and more than 200, 000 lives have been impacted in Tanzania. Women lease equipment like small tractors, maize milling machines, sunflower pressing machines, water pumps, sewing machines of various types, animals like cows, poultry. Since 2014 SELFINA is also providing clean energy solutions in collaboration with Support to Development (S2D) from The Netherlands. This is very useful especially for women in rural areas as a greater part of this country is still facing energy challenges. There many projects that have really touched my heart. One of these is the case of Rachel Sauga's lease of a power tiller from SELFINA. Rachel and her husband are small holder farmers in the Rift Valley area within Mbeya region. Prior to leasing a power tiller from SELFINA, Rachel and her husband were using a hand hoe and were only harvesting 20 bags of rice each year. With the lease of the small tractor they now harvest more than 1,500 bags of rice as they are able to plant early for the rains and cultivate slightly bigger are of land. Moreover, they also earn more income from renting out their tractor. Through a project like this, SELFINA helps in increasing income, food security and job creation. Motivated by women like Rachel SELFINA now is focusing more on value addition agricultural projects and renewable energy. Please tell us a bit about your membership in the World Economic Forum. In 2010 World Economic Forum/Schwab Foundation honoured me with "Outstanding Social Entrepreneur of Africa" Award for 2010. WEF states the Award is in recognition of the visionary, pragmatic and courageous contributions that significantly improve the state of the world. Since then I have become a permanent member of the WEF/Schwab Foundation. In 2014, Prof. Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of WEF, invited me to become a Council Member of the World Economic Forum in the New Growths Category.  With great humility I accepted the invitation and I am now a Member of Council of WEF. I praise and thank the Lord for this opportunity for it gives me a very rare chance of taking the voices of women, particularly those in rural areas, to this very powerful forum. To that effect the women’s issues are taken up to a global level where great think tankers work on solutions. I am happy to be part of this process. Do you estimate that SELFINA would work in other countries as well? Yes we expect to franchise our leasing model to other parts of East Africa and later on to other parts of Africa, hopefully within the next three years. Through Vital Voices Global Leadership Award, I have been connected to Bank of America where I am being mentored by Titi Cole. Madam Cole is a Senior Executive Retail Products and Underwriting at the Bank of America Head office in the US. Together we are working on modalities of this. Have you always been so successful in your life, or have you also experienced heavy times? Like Saint Paul, I too have seen very good days but I have also experienced heavy times, though the Hand of the Lord has always been with me, in good and bad times. There was a time when we wanted to roll out our product very quickly to a greater part of Tanzania. Unfortunately, we hit some challenges. These include, wrong timing as our roll-out program coincided with   the international financial crisis and we suffered some consequences. Secondly Tanzania's lack of rural infrastructure proved to be a great challenge and expensive; and it did erode our working capital. We had to take a break, scale down, restructure and finally move on. All is well now and the Lord continues to give us the strength and energy that we need to reach greater heights of our work. This was a great learning experience for us yet we came out even stronger. Do you have a message for our readers, maybe especially for our female readers here in Germany ? It pays and it is very satisfying to invest in others no matter how small the investment is. In 2014, Madam Elisabeth Karien ter Muelen of the Netherlands invested in SELFINA. Her support has gone to hundreds of Tanzanian women and their families. She went on to convince her daughter also to invest in SELFINA. They both trusted in us and together we are changing lives in Tanzania. We welcome others to make a difference in other women's lives through SELFINA or anywhere where such support is needed. With compassion and love for others we can all make an impact and make the world a better place. I have seen how lease finance can change the lives of women and give them the opportunity to finally qualify for normal bank loans which helps to further grow their businesses. Through lease finance we increase financial inclusion supporting thousands if not millions of people to get economic independence. How do you see your task as a member of the UEM Council? I thank the Lord for giving me this opportunity to serve Him in this capacity as a Member of Council of UEM and Chairperson for Financial Matters (Finance Committee, the Foundation and the Investment Trust). First of all this has given me a grand opportunity  to learn more about our united work in many fronts. Secondly, my task as a Council Member places me on a vibrant two way traffic with the talented and hard working team of Management and staff of UEM so that together we translate the decisions of the UEM’s General Assembly into action and achieve high quality results for the benefit of the entire UEM Communion of Churches and Bethel. Thirdly, as a woman, I also wear a special hat to see that the voice of women from our Communion of Churches and Bethel is heard and respected at the Council. It has been a privilege to work under a very capable woman Moderator Regine Buschmann and her two women Vice Moderators (for Africa and Germany) out of the three Vice Moderators. This composition speaks volume about how highly valued women are, at UEM. Do you have any proposal or wish with regard to UEM in general? I like UEM very much and I have seen great deeds that are done day by day, week by week and month by month by the core Team at Wuppertal and at the two Regional, offices in Africa and Asia.I am also happy to see that UEM is gaining more visibility at our Parishes. Nonetheless, I propose that we still have work to do to further enhance this visibility. UEM is doing a lot of very good work on all fronts including human rights and evangelism. This should be appreciated more at the grassroots so that UEM becomes a household name at all levels, that is at the Parish, Sub-Parish level, particularly in missionary areas. What do you want to have achieved in 5 years? I want to reach out to thousands more women and their children through SELFINA and through the Church. I pray that the Lord will continue to guide my footsteps so that I get out of my comfort zone of working only in Tanzania and spread my wings to other parts of Africa where only He can guide me. Thank you, Mama Victoria!