Kuda bolsters Women participation

Nigerian and UK-based fintech company, Kuda, has revealed that it has achieved gender equity in its workforce. The firm’s Chief People Officer, Ms Rosie Hewat, announced that the number of female hires has increased by 133% over the past year, with women on the product team growing by 87%, and female members of the engineering team up by 144%. The ratio of female-to-male employees at Kuda now stands at 1:1. Ms Hewat attributed these achievements to the company’s deliberate equity-promoting initiatives, which have made it a “workplace of reference.”

To commemorate International Women’s Day, Kuda organised a month-long series of activities focused on promoting equity and advocating for women’s inclusion and visibility. The global theme for this year’s IWD was Embrace Equity, and Kuda’s goal was to seek more opportunities for women to make progress in their personal and professional lives, as well as to reposition women for economic growth and success in careers and businesses.

The IWD activities, which ran throughout March, included a showcase of the impact that Kuda has made in promoting gender equity from 2022 to 2023, as well as the company’s further commitment to gender equity. The company’s woman-led Diversity, Inclusion and Equity committee is championing more progressive initiatives, while steps taken over the past year to promote gender equity include fine-tuning Kuda’s school-to-workplace internship programme, developing a recruitment model that incentivises peer referrals, offering more opportunities for product management trainees to become product managers, and expanding the Engineering and Product teams to onboard more women into leadership roles.

Ms Hewat revealed that Kuda bolstered career growth for 20 young women it sponsored to the Africa Girls in Tech boot camp in 2022. The programme, in partnership with Africa Agility, provided beneficiaries with the opportunity to learn tech and product skills, and helped them get internships at tech startups or start freelancing. Kuda’s commitment to gender equity is part of its growth process, and it will continue to work towards building the type of workplace it dreams of, said Ms Hewat.