Dr Victoria Kisyombe is the founder and CEO of SELFINA, a non profit company in Tanzania that provides loans to mostly widows and young women. Starting from a very humble beginning, SELFINA has gone on to improve financial inclusion for women. More than 27,500 women have received lease finance, 250,000 lives have been impacted, 150,000 jobs created and more than US$ 17 million has been availed to women through a revolving fund.
SELFINA was birthed when her husband died in 1991, leaving her with three children and no property or asset, except a cow named Sero. She turned the cow into a source of income by milking the cow and selling the milk to sustain her family. She also managed to accumulate savings out of the income she yielded and in 2002, she started SELFINA in Dar es Salam and began loaning and leasing productive assets. The leased assets enable women to generate income sustainably, and at the end of the lease a client owns the asset in her own name. It becomes collateral that qualifies her for a traditional bank loan.
During an interview, she said;
”I saw that there were other women, other widows—some of them had not been to school like I had been and they were less privileged than I had been—and I thought: ‘How are they managing?’”
Victoria’s successful micro-leasing model has generated praise beyond Tanzania. She has been profiled by the World Bank “Doing Business in Africa”, by CNN, Lionesses of Africa (South Africa) and by Deutsche Welle, etc.
In 2009, she received a TIAW World of Difference 100 Award in recognition of her outstanding contribution in making “all the difference in the world” to the economic empowerment of women by The Alliance for Women (Canada). In 2010, she received an Outstanding Social Entrepreneur Award from the World Economic Forum and Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs in recognition of visionary, pragmatic and courageous contributions that significantly improve the state of the world. In July 2014,she received a Global Leadership Award by Vital Voices Global Leadership founded by Hon. Hillary Clinton. She was also recognized as a Woman of Determination in recognition of her support on the development of SMEs in Tanzania, during the 50 years Independence celebrations of her country, Tanzania.