AFKInsider: How do you seek investors?

Donna Katzin: More and more investors around the country and the globe are focusing on making an impact and helping to change people’s lives. So there is a market of people out there looking for investment opportunities. It’s not just big bankers either. Institutions, companies and every day people invest in us. Also, a number of people who were active in the apartheid movement understood this. They were the beginning. They knew the importance of pooling together resources to increase their communities’ opportunities.

AFKInsider: How do you choose which individual, business or family should have access to loans and your guarantees?

Donna Katzin: We are actually on the board of the credit selection committee, so we have an active voice in that. Clients come to us in different ways. Some of them come directly when they cannot get a loan from the bank. Some of them go to the bank first and then the banks come to us. Sometimes we work through incubators, these hubs that help businesses develop a plan, get support and eventually launch their business. We even go through other organizations. There is one in northern South Africa currently working with young farmers.

AFKInsider: Why the focus on women in this country?

Donna Katzin: It’s very significant that we choose South African women entrepreneurs, because even though in sub-Saharan Africa there are about an equal number of men and women entrepreneurs-in South Africa, half as many women are entrepreneurs. So these women in this country are up against particularly difficult odds. And not just traditional factors, like the patriarchy system, colonial rule or apartheid — which delegated women basically as reproducers or laborers. Even today, economic diversity is still not equal in the genders. Women are still facing tremendous constraints. Women can do income-generating activities, but the moment that there are contracts and credits attached to things, they often become men’s jobs.

When companies are looking to extend commercial markets, they are often not buying from women. When they are looking to extend credit to rural areas, they tend to not look for women clients. So, our job at Shared Interest is to understand these obstacles, and make sure that women have access and the opportunity to credit and access to markets so they can continue to grow, build and thrive. Since we’ve started doing this over 20 years ago, we’ve reached over 2 million black South Africans- most of them women.