Women-led collectives are quietly revolutionising rural economies worldwide, driving financial inclusion, entrepreneurship, and community resilience amid global development shifts. India’s National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM) stands as a global benchmark, offering scalable lessons for marginalised demographics in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. This session discusses NRLM’s institutional design, financial inclusion pathways, and social mobilisation strategies, and how they can accelerate women’s economic mobility in both the South Asian and African contexts. 

• How can women-led collectives evolve from vehicles for financial inclusion into platforms for entrepreneurship, enterprise creation, and market integration? 
• What kind of initiatives can be designed to facilitate broader market access for products manufactured by women-led collectives? 
• How can digital tools, particularly those adapted from India’s experience, strengthen financial inclusion, monitoring, and livelihood outcomes in the subcontinent? 
• Which elements of NRLM’s institutional architecture, social mobilisation, credit-led models, and convergence with public schemes are most transferable to India’s neighbours and the African continent?

Speakers: 

Priyanka Chaturvedi, Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha, India

Chevaan Daniel, Executive Group Director, Capital Maharaja Group, Sri Lanka 

Gwendoline Abunaw, Managing Director, Ecobank Cameroon, Cameroon 

Jackline Kagume, Programme Officer, Constitution, Law and Economy, Institute of Economic Affairs, Kenya 

Sunaina Kumar, Director, Centre for New Economic Diplomacy, Observer Research Foundation, India

Moderator:

Anna-Katharina Hornidge, Director of the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS) and Professor for Global Sustainable Development at the University of Bonn, Germany