Jeddah, KSA - The Islamic Development Bank (IDB), and the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to establish Arab Women’s Enterprise Fund (AWEF) in order to support less privileged women in Arab countries to unleash their economic potentials and increase their participation in the economy.

The MoU was signed by RT Honorable Desmond Swayne, UK’s Minister of State for International Development and Dr. Ahmad Mohamed Ali, IDB President, at DFID’s head office in London. According to Dr. Ali, the signing of the MoU provides “great opportunity to lift the women in Arab countries in transition from abject poverty and make them fully participate in the economic activities of their countries.”

As part of the agreement, both IDB and DFID will contribute £10 million in Pounds Sterling each (nearly US $20 million) towards the establishment of Arab Women’s Enterprise Fund.

The MoU aims at establishing the necessary governance arrangements for the Fund, exploring the opportunity for co-financing individual projects, supporting generation of knowledge, dissemination of information, and demonstration and utilization of best practices, collaborating on ways to bring on board other development partners, and supporting advocacy events to engage the private sector and to raise public awareness and mobilize support for the mutually agreed initiatives.

The IDB President informed the Minister that IDB will be very happy to partner with the DFID in other development projects. He told the Minister that already IDB has partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on polio eradication, and has recently signed an agreement with Ministers from Ebola affected countries for the implementation of the Late King Abdullah’s US $35 million initiative on the fight against Ebola.