Buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) company Lipa Later operating in Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, and Nigeria, has announced its commitment to ending Sexual Gender Based Violence (SGBV) in Kenya.
The firm has partnered with Crevit Mulier Fund, a subsidiary of Crevit Mulier & Co to empower marginalised women and survivors of SGBV with the vision of developing digital tools and devices to access financial resources, promote legal education, legal aid and financial security.
Lipa Later Chief Executive Eric Muli says through the partnership the Crevit Mulier Fund will kick off the initial project of furnishing a newly constructed home of a survivor of domestic violence in Meru.
The partnership will also ensure women within identified safe houses, communities, and women groups access products from Lipa Later at a more affordable rate over a period of 12months.
The move comes as Kenya is looking at eradicating the vice.
In June 2021, the government made a decision to end Gender-Based Violence (GBV) including sexual violence by 2026.
When making the announcement, Kenya promised to intensify its campaign to end these violations by undertaking a series of 12 bold commitments that would remove the systemic barriers that allow GBV to thrive.
Some of the commitment includes the full implementation of GBV laws and policies by adopting a GBV indicator in the government Performance contracting framework to track duty-bearers accountability on enforcement and implementation of GBV laws and policies by 2022.
The country has also planned to invest $23 million for GBV prevention and response by 2022 and increase resource allocation up to $50 million by 2026 through a co-financing model, Introduce a module on GBV in the 2022 Kenya Demographic Health Survey to strengthen the utilization of gender statistics in informing the design, scale-up, and evaluation of FGM and GBV programming.
Commenting on the announcement, Kenya’s Chief Justice Martha Koome said, “SGBV has always been viewed as just a women’s issue, but it’s a societal issue. In Kenya, over 40pc of women are likely to face SGBV with 1 in 5 girls forced to undergo child marriage or FGM. Reports also show that Cases of SGBV had increased more than 25pc in 2020 than the previous year which was one of the effects of home confinement.”
In January, Lipa Later raised US$12 million from a consortium of investors to help it increase coverage in existing markets and expand into new ones.
Formed in 2018, Lipa Later leverages data analytics to provide consumers with access to convenient and affordable credit. Its proprietary credit-scoring and machine learning system enable a consumer to sign up and get a credit limit in seconds, without the need for bulky documentation and a lengthy approval process.
