Girls First Finance Loans

Impact Goal: Expand access to education finance and entrepreneurship opportunities for young women

Description: Girls First Finance (GFF) is an innovative social fintech venture focused on improving access to education and professional development for young women worldwide, starting in Africa. GFF offers student loans and personal empowerment tools through a mobile super app, employing behavioural underwriting to evaluate loan applicants. This method considers the users' engagement with the app and their potential for income generation post-graduation, bypassing conventional and often biased underwriting criteria.

GFF’s solution is a blend of financial support and holistic empowerment tools packaged within a mobile app. The app facilitates affordable education loans at commercially reasonable interest rates, with a portion of the loan also available for post-graduation micro-enterprises. GFF anticipates leveraging a $300k grant to expand its loan platform, supporting more vulnerable girls and marketing the app across Kenya for broader scale beyond 2024.