OPENING REMARKS BY THE HON.MINISTER IN THE PRESIDENCY RESPONSIBLE FOR WOMEN, YOUTH AND PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES, MS SINDISIWE CHIKUNGA,
MP DURING THE GLOBAL CONFERENCE ON FINANCIAL INCLUSION AND WOMEN EMPOWERMENT
Date: 6 MAY 2025
VENUE: SUNCITY RESORT, NORTH WEST
• Programme Directors: Adv Mikateko
• Joyce Maluleke: Director-General: Department of
Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities, and
Mr Mosweu Paul Mogotlhe: Director-General:
Office of the Premier, North West Province.
• Honourable Premier of North West Province: Mr
Lazarus Mokgosi
• Traditional and Religious Leaders Present
•Executive Leadership of the Northwest Province
• Distinguished Representatives of the G20 Troika
• Distinguished delegates of the G20 Member
States, Invited Guest Countries, and International
Organisations and Partners
• Heads of Delegation
• Distinguished guests
• Ladies and gentlemen, Good Morning!
1. INTRODUCTION AND GREETINGS
My name is Sindisiwe Chikunga, and I serve as the Minister in
the Presidency responsible for Women, Youth and Persons with
Disabilities. This morning,on behalf of our Government and our
President, His Excellency President Cyril Ramaphosa, I have
the honour of extending very warm and fraternal greetings to all
our guests from far and near to this G20 Conference on Global
Innovative Approaches and Best Practices on Financial
Inclusion as a catalyst for Women’s Economic Empowerment.
We are delighted to welcome all delegates to the beautiful
North West Province, and are eager to share with you our
country’s warm atmosphere, our people’s exceptional
hospitality, and our rich history of struggle and dedication to
the realization of freedom, equality, solidarity, and sustainability
for all.
Our conference is taking place against the backdrop of our
collective aspirations as reflected in critical global and regional
frameworks, including the Sustainable Development Goals
(SDGs), the African Union Agenda 2063, South Africa’s
National Development Plan (NDP) 2030, Our 2025 G20
Presidency Priorities, as well as Key Priority 2 of the Working
Group on the Empowerment of Women (EWWG), i.e.,
(Promoting Financial Inclusion of and for Women). All of
these key documents foreground financial inclusion as a catalyst
for women’s economic empowerment.
2. SITUATIONAL ANALYSIS AND RATIONALE
Dear Delegates,
The significance of this conference cannot be overstated. Three
decades have passed since the historic Beijing Declaration
and Platform for Action established a vision for women’s
economic empowerment. At that historic gathering in 1995, 189
governments acknowledged for the first time that women’s
economic participation was essential for global development and
the future of humanity, with a third of the framework’s
recommendations addressing economic issues.
Our decision to elevate and shine the spotlight on financial
inclusion as a priority theme during our chairship, not only seeks
to build on the remarkable legacies of Brazil and India, but
also to reaffirm the ongoing legacy of the women who came
before us and their unrelenting emphasis on the need to achieve
women’s economic and financial autonomy as a necessary
condition for lasting gender equality.
Three decades ago, the women who came before us correctly
observed that the considerable gender disparities in who gets
to exert power over economic structures in societies were
foundational to persisting gender inequalities. They saw then
what persists to this day – that in most parts of the world, women
are virtually absent from structures where economic
decisions are made and economic power is exercised, this
includes structures where financial, monetary, commercial
and other economic policies are formulated. Noting this
trend, the women correctly concluded, for it to be inclusive,
development, including decisions on how the proceeds of
economic activities are to be distributed, had to be womenled.
The conditions that warranted advocacy for women-led
development persist to this day.
Despite decades of advocacy work, the gendered socioeconomic
gap remains both untenable and unsustainable.
Women and girls continue to shoulder the global burden of
poverty, which in turn deprives them of accessing vital health
services, education, and socioeconomic opportunities
throughout their lives. As a result, women continue to be
underrepresented in economic decision-making positions, they
have limited access to credit and capital, they face discrimination
in employment, they earn less, shoulder disproportionate
unpaid care responsibilities, and lag behind in digital
financial access.
Even in areas where women’s labour force participation has
peaked, their work often takes the form of self-employment in the
informal sector with no security and limited opportunities for
growth. Here on the continent, parts of the Global South and
beyond, the majority of women are either unemployed, underemployed,
or mostly vulnerably employed.
The women who pursue entrepreneurship are often reduced to
the informal sector with limited access to capital and other
formal financial services. They are hindered by the lack of
essential skills to effectively manage and sustain businesses,
and take advantage of available financial services, products, and
other existing business opportunities. Only a handful of financial
institutions understand the unique needs of women enough to
provide them with relevant products and services that
adequately respond to these needs.
As we speak, only 15% of the SDGs are on track to be
achieved by 2030, and about 37% of these targets have
shown no progress or, even worse, have regressed below
the 2015 baseline. Sustainable Development Goal 5, which
aims to achieve gender equality and empower all women and
girls, is one of those goals that will not be met by 2030. Alongside
escalating geopolitical tensions, ongoing debt pressures carry
the potential to push millions more women into extreme poverty,
particularly as debt servicing costs continue to divert resources
away from education, health, and other public goods.
More recently, we gathered in New York for the annual
Commission on the Status of Women to commemorate 30
years since Beijing. The general feeling was that of hope and
fear, fear that the struggle for gender equality is facing a
significant pushback from powerful corners. This fear was aptly
captured by the UN Secretary-General during his moving
opening remarks. He cautioned that:
“Three decades on, the Beijing promise feels more distant
than we might ever have imagined. Women’s rights are
under siege. The poison of patriarchy is back – and it is
back with a vengeance: Slamming the brakes on action;
tearing-up progress; and mutating into new and dangerous
forms. But there is an antidote. That antidote is action. Now
is the time for those of us who care about equality for
women and girls to stand up and to speak out. Now is the
time for the world to accelerate progress and deliver on the
promise of Beijing.”
While acknowledging progress in reducing maternal mortality
and expanding legal protections for women, the Secretary-
General lamented the persistence of economic inequality and
discrimination. He further singled out the use of artificial
intelligence and emerging technologies in ways that not only
amplify gendered abuse, but further widen socio-economic
disparities between women and men.
3. WHY PRIORITIZE FINANCIAL INCLUSION? KEY
CONSIDERATIONS
Program Director
In this conference, we have therefore foregrounded the theme of
financial inclusion as a pillar of a century old clarion call , a
call that, for generations, has carried with it a timeless message
that says:
placing the levers of economic power and control over the
wealth producing resources of any nation in the hands of
women is neither a favor nor an act of charity— instead it
should form part of our collective resolve to redress the past
by ensuring that women receive equitable returns for their
contributions to the daily functioning of this country, this
continent, and the world.
The evidence is clear and compelling: when women have equal
access to financial resources, economies grow and
humanity thrives. When women participate in economic
governance, policies become more responsive to diverse
needs and more effective overall.Studies have consistently
shown that increasing women’s financial inclusion raises GDP,
reduces poverty, and enhances business performance.
We know, for example, from extensive UN data and reports that
women spend a larger portion of their income on their families
compared to men, often investing around 90% of their
earnings back into their households, while men invest
around 30-40%. It therefore goes without saying that allowing a
patriarchal consolidation of economic power away from
women, is antithetical and, frankly, contradictory to our global
pursuit for a just, humane and collectively prosperous
society.
Dear Delegates,
We have foregrounded the theme of financial inclusion because,
despite this knowledge and the evidence before us , as we
gather as delegates to this conference, for women and girls, the
world outside is still a far cry from the one envisioned in
Beijing 1995. As we gather to address their current fate and
imagine their future economic prospects, millions of women
worldwide still face a growing list of systemic barriers. The world
over, for the majority of women out there, progress towards
financial inclusion has been far from ideal and inadequate at
best.
Moreover, with the G20 taking place for the first time on the
African continent, our theme of financial inclusion also draws
direct inspiration from the African Union Agenda 2063 and
the legacy of South Africa’s chairship of the African Union,
which coincided with the Decade of African Women. During our
Chairship of the AU, our President, His Excellency President
Ramaphosa stood out for championing Women’s Financial and
Economic Inclusion at the forefront of his programme of action.
4. MOVING FORWARD: KEY AREAS OF CONSIDERATION
Program Drirector, I wish to highlight five broad pillars of
financial inclusion that I believe require our urgent attention:
Firstly, at the level of economic decision-making and policy
leadership, we must implement gender-responsive budgeting
across all government departments, establish meaningful quotas
for women in financial institutions and regulatory bodies, and
create specialized economic advisory councils that amplify
women’s voices in all areas where the direction of our economies
is determined.
Secondly, to ensure meaningful access to financial resources
and capital formation, progressive fiscal reforms and an
overhaul of the global financial architecture are long
overdue. According to the World Economic Forum, women
entrepreneurs face a global financing gap estimated at $1.7
trillion. Research shows that traditional banking systems are
failing women through collateral requirements that overlook
women’s limited property ownership, financial products that
ignore women’s business patterns, and gender bias in lending
decisions. Without access to capital, women’s entrepreneurial
potential remains severely constrained. Addressing this domain
requires specialized women’s banking initiatives, scaled-up
credit programs with clear pathways to formal banking, genderresponsive
investment funds, and reforms to our property laws.
Thirdly, this conference must address the issue of women’s
access to land and related productive assets as key pillars of
financial inclusion and the foundation of wealth creation. We
contend that the economic and financial inclusion of women
cannot be achieved alongside landlessness and unjust patterns
of property ownership. We therefore hope that this conference
will also serve as a foundational platform for addressing the
enduring social, legal, and customary barriers that continue to
hinder women’s ownership of land, capital, credit, technology,
and other means of production.
Fourth, we should also emerge from this conference having
exchanged ideas on how to remove trade barriers that
disproportionately affect women and ensure fair representation
in cross-border trade policies.
For example, how do we position women at the forefront of
beneficiating the projected surge in minerals critical to energy
transitions and their related value chains? Our region, Southern
Africa, is central to the global energy transitions. From electric
vehicles to solar panels and future digital innovations, the shift to
clean energy is set to heighten demand for these minerals. We
expect scholars and practitioners alike to present concrete
measures to ensure that women-owned businesses are at the
forefront of value addition across these industries. We need
tangible ideas and actionable strategies—for example, on how
we can leverage the AfCFTA to attract both public and private
investment into domestic processing, beneficiation, and
commercialisation capabilities—so we can move beyond the
setbacks of economies dependent on basic extraction.
Lastly, another domain that requires our urgent attention is
leveraging preferential public procurement at various levels
of government to achieve sustainable financial inclusion
outcomes. This should include setting mandatory quotas for
contracts awarded to women-owned businesses, with specific
attention to marginalized women entrepreneurs. In South Africa
we have put the quota at 40% for women owned businesses.
As recently as July 2024 , President Ramaphosa signed into
law the Public Procurement Act—legislation that will
regulate public procurement, including preferential
procurement, by all organs of state. We welcome the
President’s decisive intervention in this regard.
This Public Procurement Act represents a comprehensive
overhaul of South Africa’s procurement landscape. It
consolidates existing laws, strengthens governance through a
central Public Procurement Office, promotes socio-economic
transformation through a structured preferential procurement
framework, enhances transparency and combats corruption
through measures such as mandatory disclosure and the use of
technology, and provides a dedicated dispute resolution
mechanism.
For these efforts to succeed, it is essential to invest in
modernising the capacity of women-owned businesses so that
they can produce, supply, and distribute high-quality goods and
services—equipped with the latest manufacturing technologies
and production tools.
We must also develop gender-responsive fintech solutions
and digital banking platforms that address literacy barriers,
incorporating design features tailored to the needs of women in
rural and farming communities. Our department is currently
working with the prudential authorities to introduce a cooperative
bank in order to address gaps in the system that continue to
leave women behind.
Finally, we must be able to track progress in real time in order
to intervene when necessary. To this end, during our 2025
Women’s Economic Assembly, we launched the Presidential
Index for Gender-Inclusive Supply Chains. This data-driven tool
is designed to track, measure, and evaluate procurement
transformation across industries, providing a clear mechanism
for assessing real impact and ensuring that women-owned
businesses are fully integrated into South Africa’s economic
landscape.
4. CONCLUSION
Programme Directors,
As we deliberate in the coming days, let us be reminded of the
words of the UN Secretary-General, who aptly observed: “We
are sometimes told a rising tide of economic growth lifts all boats.
But in reality, rising inequality sinks all boats.”
Let us emerge from this conference with a clear roadmap,
concrete measures, and realistic timelines for placing women’s
current and future financial well-being at the center of our work.
Let us be bold in our ambitions and unwavering in our
commitment to ensuring that the financial systems of tomorrow
work for all—not just a few.
Once again, thank you very much and I very much look forward
to our engagements.