In honour of International Women’s Day, this webinar, hosted by MicroLoan Foundation and the Swiss Capacity Building Facility, will explore how the Katumba digital savings platform is empowering financial inclusion and resilience for women in extreme poverty in Zambia, while offering insights into designing inclusive financial tools for underserved communities.
In honour of International Women’s Day, this webinar will focus on how technology and financial inclusion can help women build resilience in the face of economic challenges. Hosted by MicroLoan Foundation and Swiss Capacity Building Foundation (SCBF), the session will highlight key lessons from the development of the Katumba Savings Product—a digital savings solution designed for women living in extreme poverty in Zambia. Developed in partnership with MicroLoan Foundation, Katumba addresses the unique needs of women with limited education and no prior access to formal financial services, offering an inclusive and user-friendly way to save, borrow, and manage finances.
This webinar will explore the impact of such innovations and share insights into designing financial tools that are both inclusive and accessible, ensuring they empower even the most underserved women to overcome challenges like droughts, agricultural losses, and power shortages.
Key Takeaways:
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Learning & Insights Manager, SCBF
Azalea leads SCBF's efforts in sharing key learnings and insights across the financial inclusion ecosystem. With a deep understanding of the challenges and opportunities in building financial resilience, Azalea will moderate this session and guide the discussion around how digital solutions are transforming Zambia's financial landscape, particularly for women.
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Chief Executive Officer, MicroLoan Foundation Zambia
Jack Ngoma is a passionate champion for women’s financial inclusion and resilience. As CEO of MicroLoan Foundation Zambia, Jack has been instrumental in driving innovation in financial solutions that empower women in Zambia. Under his leadership, MicroLoan Foundation Zambia has grown into the second largest microfinance institution in Zambia. Active clients numbers have grown from 11,000 to over 53,000. He has secured new investments and the loan book has grown from $800,000 to over $4,000,000.
Jack has instilled a culture of innovation and spearheaded the introduction of mobile money services increasing efficiency, profitability and social impact as a result. His latest achievement is conceptualising Katumba, a digital savings platform that helps women in rural Zambia save and create a digital footprint to forge a way to access formal finance and invest in their future.
Jack is a seasoned leader in the microfinance sector, with deep expertise in scaling impactful financial products and forging strategic partnerships that align with local community needs. His commitment to enhancing access to formal finance for underserved women has made him a key advocate for gender-focused innovation in Zambia.
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Project Lead, Katumba Savings Solution
George Saggers is the project lead for the Katumba Savings Solution. He specialises in delivering tailored technical solutions for startups, SMEs, and organizations in Central and Southern Africa. He brings expertise in end-to-end digital transformation, encompassing solution scoping, business analysis, development, and implementation.
His work encompasses end-to-end digital transformation, starting with solution scoping and business analysis, through to development and implementation. He focuses on designing technical solutions that align with project objectives and product needs, translating them into clear technical requirements to drive development. Additionally, his expertise extends to data analysis and AI modeling to generate actionable insights.
With experience spanning sectors such as smallholder and commercial agriculture, logistics, microfinance, security, rural development, and retail, George focuses on understanding local user needs and identifying technologies suited to the geographic context.
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Founder & Director, Quirk Consulting
Lydia the Founder and Director of Quirk Consulting, based in Lusaka, Zambia. She is a behavioural scientist with over 10 years of experience in behavioural science research, programme design, and evaluation. As a leader in behaviourally informed initiatives, she has developed social and behaviour change strategies for major international organizations including UNICEF, the Gates Foundation, and the World Health Organization. Her research portfolio includes leading UNICEF's global assessment of institutional capacity for social and behaviour change, along with conducting user research on diverse topics ranging from financial savings products to telehealth services and public health programming.
In her role as a lecturer at the University of Zambia, Lydia heads the Centre for Excellence in Human-Centred Design within the School of Public Health. She is an established expert in behavioural science capacity building, delivering specialized workshops and training programs for both public and private sector organizations. Her clients include government bodies such as the Zambian Ministry of Health and Ghana Health Services, international and non-governmental organizations like UNICEF and the Nigeria Policy Innovation Centre, and prominent corporations including Swiggy (India), Walmart and Meta (USA) States, and Bulb Energy (UK). Throughout her work, Lydia focuses on translating complex research findings into practical, actionable recommendations for behaviourally informed product and programme design.