Credit: UN Women/Olivia Owen
BANGKOK, Thailand, May 3 2021 (IPS) - The lockdowns and illnesses brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic have dramatically increased the need to care for children, the elderly and the sick. And in societies where gender inequality and biased norms persist, most of this burden has fallen on women, many of whom have had to leave their regular jobs with no idea of when they can return.
Actually, the pandemic has merely exacerbated the existing stereotypes about the role of women, who are reflexively expected to take care of their family members, house chores, and myriad other daily domestic tasks that are unpaid but vital to households, communities and economies.
1. Nigeria’s FairMoney launches venture in India
FairMoney, Nigeria-based digital bank, has launched its venture in India, as it pursues emerging market growth.
FairMoney, which aims to give underbanked people access to digital financial services, was founded by Laurin Hainy, Nico Berthozat and Matthieu Gendreau.
With the new launch, FairMoney will take its digital offering and services to India, using loans as a launching pad for its future bank accounts.
Building its infrastructure to support state of the art technologies, it adapts artificial intelligence (AI) to disburse loans to users in seconds, without any human intervention.
By building this automated process, and with a focus on very large countries like Nigeria and India, FairMoney already has close to 1.5 million users across the two markets, and hopes to keep the same fast growth pace.