LIONESS WEEKENDER COVER STORY
Enda inter-arabe and Enda tamweel, transforming lives through micro-finance
Getting access to finance and access to markets and opportunities continue to be significant challenges for women on the African continent, and in Tunisia, this was particularly a challenge for low-income women. For Essma Ben Hamida, this was the motivation and inspiration for her to embark on a journey of impact driven social entrepreneurship. Her aim, to change the narrative and change lives through the provision of micro-financing for women and young micro-entrepreneurs, empowering them to improve their lives through business.
Lionesses of Africa had the pleasure and privilege of meeting with Essma and learning more about her unique journey and the significant impact her innovative micro-financing models are making in her country.
What year did you start your business?
After a successful career as an international journalist, I came back home in 1989 and co-launched with my husband, Michael Cracknell, an NGO, Enda inter-arabe, in 1990. When we began, we had absolutely no funding. We began micro-finance in 1995 and when the law made this possible, we created a for-profit company, Enda tamweel in 2016. It remains the leading and largest micro-finance institution in Tunisia, serving low-income women and young micro-entrepreneurs. Enda contributes to reducing economic and social exclusion of around a million low-income Tunisians for the last 30 years.
What does your business do?
The company, Enda tamweel, provides financial services, mainly micro-credit and micro-insurance to low-income Tunisians, mainly women and youth in the disadvantaged rural and urban areas all over the country from 101 branches. Today 400 000 active borrowers are benefiting from our services to launch and grow their small businesses. They are creating employment, generating income and improving their living conditions and those of their family members, improving their children’s education and health care. Women are enjoying better decision-making roles within the household and building self-confidence about their contribution to the family, the community and the economy as a whole. Over the past 25 years, 2,5 billion dollars have been disbursed to a total of 900 000 borrowers. Each micro-entrepreneur can gain access to a line of credit up to 15 000 dollars. Moreover, education loans, home-improvement loans and micro-insurance contribute to improving the family well-being and reducing economic and social vulnerability and social exclusion.
In addition, the NGO, now self-sufficient unlike most NGOs which depend on subsidies, is the major shareholder of the company. It provides business training and advice as well as coaching, various education and cultural activities to low-income people, especially women, youth and children.
Enda is paving the way for a new generation of successful young entrepreneurs by spreading a business mindset among unemployed youth and the student community to enable them to launch businesses and create their own jobs in a country facing outrageous unemployment. It also contributes to empowering women through awareness-raising sessions about their rights and duties to become better citizens and contribute to the country’s progress.
L: Woman of Influence of the Year Award 2016; R: Schwab Social Entrepreneur Award MENA Marrakech 2012
What inspired you to start your business?
When I was a child in post-independence Tunisia, I witnessed my mother and grandmother almost begging my grandfather (my father died when I was six) for the daily household allowance, not to speak of buying clothes or shoes for the family. This experience made me realize that women were weak because they did not have independent access to money and depended on their husbands or fathers to cover any expenditure for their family or themselves.
Since I began working with low-income women in the poor neighborhoods of Tunisia, I have realized that women lack access to money, to capital, to start or develop their business, increase family income and improve their lives and their families’ lives. The buzz word is access.
In my previous life as an international journalist, I met and interviewed many women all over the world, including in my own country, who were excluded from access to capital and economic opportunities, not to speak of an honorable social status within their communities because of religious, ethnic, gender or social biases. I therefore decided to stop writing and reporting about these desperate situations and take action to bring a positive change to women’s fate and bring women’s empowerment to Tunisia, and hopefully in other neighbouring Arab Muslim countries.
What makes your business so unique, what differentiates it in the marketplace?
In fact, when we started our NGO we were not considering it a “business” and the concept of “social business” did not yet exist. Then, in 2010 I received the Schwab award as an “outstanding social entrepreneur” and I realized that what we are achieving is a “business”. Indeed, it is a unique “business” because it responds to an urgent world-wide social and economic need. In Tunisia, many women are well educated but not economically active or socially and statistically included as actors in the economy. In 2019, 67% of Tunisians who earned their “baccalaureat” were women but fewer than 25% are part of the working population. This represents a huge waste of resources for an 11-million population country. 41% of female university graduates are unemployed against 21% of males and the country has only 15 000 women entrepreneurs in the formal sector!
In Tunisia, unlike in most sub-Saharan African countries, women were traditionally busy working at home and on the land of their fathers and husbands but not considered as real business women to be seen busy on streets and in markets. This struck me and encouraged me to help these women become active and take their businesses outside, receiving more visibility and recognition, and gain access to the traditionally male business workplace.
L: Essma at CGI Middle East Session 2011; R: Essma at G20 Hamburg 2018
How has your business been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and how has it responded or pivoted?
Women in low-income areas were facing several obstacles to entering the male-oriented business world and markets. Though education is compulsory, women lack training and have little or no business education, inadequate knowledge of markets, public services, networks, information, technology. They face family and community prejudices and constraining legal and administrative rules and procedures. Most importantly, they lack access to capital and credit and are spurned by risk-averse banks. in 2011, out of 75% of business women who apply for a bank loan, only 47% obtain one. The situation is worse in rural areas where women have little access to land (only 4,5% own land), receive lower wages than men (50 to 70% less), and the girls’ school dropout rate is higher than in urban areas.
Enda’s social mission was set to reduce some of these obstacles, increase women’s social and economic inclusion by educating and training women, increasing their self-confidence, helping them recover their natural role within the family and the community, and give them a chance to become active in a more conducive business environment. 3.5 million loans worth some $2 billion have been provided in total over these 25 years to 900 000 low-income entrepreneurs, particularly women, to enable them access regular capital and boost their businesses.
The pandemic and the economic crisis that it is entailing, has a dramatic impact on poor people and their purchasing power. Specifically, artisans and all small businesses related to food and leisure activities are sorely affected by the repetitive confinement and the strict measures imposed by governments. At the same time, several local food producers and small industries are badly hit by cheap products imported from Turkey or China induced by bad government and Parties’ political decisions.
To help poor people face these crises, Enda tamweel has taken several measures, such as loan rescheduling and interest rate reduction for borrowers especially affected by the effects of the pandemic. The only way to support these small businesses during the pandemic is to keep providing them with financial services, especially credit and insurance, and closely help them monitor their businesses with regular coaching and counselling. Enda is also providing psychological support much needed by the most vulnerable people among this population.
L: Essma and Michael at Enda’s 20th Anniversary; R: Essma receives award from Mrs Mbeki, 1st Lady of South Africa 2003
Tell us about your team, what makes them special, how do they work together?
When we started in 1990, there were two of us, myself and my British husband who played a major role in building the NGO and later the company alongside the management team. Today, the company employs 2 000 people, 70% of them university graduates and 50% women. The NGO employs 50 professionals and trainers, the majority of them women. As Enda started as an NGO, Michael my husband and I have trained our employees on a strong social mission and educated them to be at the service of poor and excluded people. The majority of them come from the same low-income areas they are serving and have developed a strong sense of commitment to support their communities and bring the positive change they deserve. Today, the younger generation has taken over the management of the company after receiving high-level training and support through microfinance and development courses. Most of our employees have been trained in integrating the gender approach into their daily work to offer women the priority and the quality of services they deserve.
At the NGO, a well-educated and dedicated team of trainers and coaches are delivering daily courses and personal coaching to young start-uppers and to women entrepreneurs to step up and grow their businesses or to work on their personal development and leadership. Unfortunately, women still need to learn how to work in teams and leave their pride and egos aside when it comes to helping other women. They also need to learn how to ask support from their male colleagues who share the same values and not be critically feminist.
Share your entrepreneurial journey. Do you come from an entrepreneurial family?
As I said, I never thought of myself as an entrepreneur. As a little girl, I saw my mother working hard sewing clothes for neighbors and family members, weaving beautiful carpets to be taken by a middleman to the market and sold with a substantial margin, and I saw my father sell goods in his tiny shop. I never considered them as micro-entrepreneurs. Myself, I was educated to become a teacher then a journalist while I was dreaming to become a singer, a career not suitable for a woman and as a result never received echo or support from my family and the society at that time!
But I think it is genetic. As many Tunisian Berber women and men of this country, I must have some entrepreneurial genes inherited from the legendary “Elissa”/Dido, who built the famous city of Carthage and our Phoenician ancestors who practiced all sorts of trade and business across the Mediterranean Sea. Of course, as a Muslim woman, I might have been impressed by the historic role played by the Muslim business woman, Khadija, the first wife of the Prophet Mohamed. Of course, in this gender-biased context, the male-dominated Arab Muslim literature and education never taught us about Arab women’s entrepreneurial skills nor highlighted this fantastic heritage and legacy for the successive new generations of Arab women. Today, women themselves will need to break this infernal chain and support Arab women’s empowerment and full integration into their countries’ economic, social and political governance.
L: Essma at Marche Intilaka 2015; C: Essma at Ettadhamen Branch; R: Client meeting during the filming of M6 2015
Who have been your personal entrepreneurial role models?
Frankly, I do not have a role model in business as I was not thinking of myself as doing business. I rather regarded the late great Egyptian singer, Oum Kalthoum, as my role model for an artistic career which I have dreamed of and cherished for several years before I dropped this dream. But, when I developed my passion for creating an NGO and working for a noble social mission, I was impressed by several successful NGO leaders I had interviewed in Latin America and Asia when I was a journalist. Finally, by Professor Muhamed Yunus who launched the microfinance institution, Grameen Bank, in Bangladesh, and the late Pancho Otero who launched BancoSol in Bolivia.
What are your future plans and aspirations for your business?
Now that we have succeeded in creating a successful microfinance company, the NGO Enda is working on a sustainable model to create other institutions that will provide low income entrepreneurs, with more business and personal training, with access to mobile payment services, to social impact investment and hopefully to savings when permitted by the central bank. We are working on launching a business academy that will disseminate entrepreneurial culture and train the new generations of successful entrepreneurs. With the support of French cooperation and the World Bank, we are testing new concepts to the entrepreneurial scene, through support to agri-business, to small farmers grouped into self-governed organizations and cooperatives, support to young start-uppers to launch social businesses based on the social values of fair trade, circular economy, shared resources, respect of the environment and local resources, of gender and positive impact on the community. By 2025 we hope to offer a complete sustainable model of a “social Holding” that provides all sorts of financial and non-financial services to as many needy Tunisian people and hopefully introduce it to neighboring Algeria and Libya. We hope the model will serve for other NGOs and the private sector to follow the concept and build sustainable programmes that support the government’s strategies and create shared wealth and jobs for the 80 million Arab young people who are likely to remain unemployed in the next coming years.
L: Essma speaking at the World Economic Forum Marrakech 2010; R: Essma with Enda’s clients at Ettadhamen
What gives you the most satisfaction being an entrepreneur?
Being a person with no strong financial background and a rather artistic and literary education, I am proud to have contributed to building a successful company that impacts the lives of at least 1 million Tunisians (including family members). Today, our outstanding portfolio is $350 million, we employ 2 000 staff, 70% of them of graduates, and serve 400 000 active clients (60% women) all over Tunisia from 101 branches. Women are empowered, children are getting off to a better start in life, homes are improved and … men are finally listening to their wives!
However, I must warn that we should not be too feminist and leave men aside in their own world. That’s why at Enda we started offering credit only to women then we opened the service to men in their communities as they reminded us these men are their husbands, brothers and sons and will continue to be sitting idle in the cafes and bars. Often, inactive and unproductive adolescent boys could easily fall prey to gangsterism and extremism serving bad models for young members in their family and ending into terrorism. Today, many of those youngsters are trained by the NGO to start a small business then financed by the company Enda tamweel and are therefore able to support their families alongside their mothers and sisters or wives.
What is the biggest piece of advice you can give to other young aspirant women entrepreneurs?
Don’t give up! Keep faith in what you decided to do and in your capacities. Don’t hesitate to ask for help and support from everybody including younger people and from men. Don’t be shy. It is tough to succeed. Usually we suffer a lot before we succeed. Don’t let men or women or backward traditions and a false interpretation of religion destroy your dreams. Be passionate when you start doing something. Passion is a key to success. Be honest with people you serve and with yourself. Honesty and integrity are another key to force people’s respect and therefore to success and to reach peace of mind. When possible, think about social and environmental impact before you launch a business. Ask yourself what can you do for your community, your country and not how much you will earn.
To learn more about the inspirational Essma Ben Hamida, and the work of Enda inter-arabe and Enda tamweel, visit their social media pages and websites below:
Essma Ben Hamida
FACEBOOK | INSTAGRAM | TWITTER | LINKEDIN
Enda inter-arabe
WEBSITE | FACEBOOK | INSTAGRAM | LINKEDIN
Enda tamweel