Philanthropy

Andia Chakava is the Chairperson at New Faces New Voices (NFNV) Kenya; a registered trust with perpetual succession and known as New Faces New Faces Registered Trustees. She is a founding trustee and leads a board of six trustees from various professional backgrounds, diverse skills, and industry experience and with broad networks. The organization is self-funded with the Kenyan Chapter being among other pan-African non-profit network organisations founded by Mrs. Graça Machel, as a Women in Finance Network under the Graça Machel Trust. 

• Andia has maintained this voluntary philanthropic position as the network’s chairperson since 2012 and has attained several milestones in her tenure. In 2015, the Nairobi Securities Exchange (“NSE”) in partnership with NFNV conceptualised the NSE Leadership and Diversity Series (“Series”); an initiative aimed at promoting diversity and inclusion on boards of listed companies for business growth and sustainability in the long term. In 2012 the number of directors on listed companies was 12% and as of 2019 this number was 23%.
• In 2016, NFNV partnered with renowned research firm Infotrak Research & Consulting to conduct a study on how Kenyan women are portrayed in the media entitled Women In Media: What is the Narrative? Interviews were carried out with 800 individuals and the findings were further analysed by NFNV.
• Research conducted by the Kenya Institute of Management in collaboration with Barclays Bank of Kenya, NSE and NFNV on Board Diversity in Publicly Listed Companies in Kenya and the influence on Financial Performance launched in July 2017 demonstrated the positive role that diversity and inclusion in boardrooms played in driving productivity, performance and market growth. Now in its seventh year, the Series has matured into a corporate social responsibility programme which spearheads dialogue by enhancing various aspects of leadership, diversity and inclusion within listed companies. https://management-africa.co.ke/boards-make-diversity-inclusion-top-priority/
• In 2018, NFNV and USAID EAITH collaborated on the Gender Lens Investing Workshop and Investor Showcase initiative to provide an investor readiness capacity building programme for women entrepreneurs in Tanzania aimed at improving bankability, providing an opportunity to engage with the investment community, build confidence and amplify business profiles. This culminated into an inaugural gender lens investing showcase in Dar es Salaam.
• NFNV and Nailab implemented IAM 2.0 between August 2018 and May 2019 with the objective of generating innovative solutions in response to challenges related to sexual and reproductive health with emphasis placed on promoting women entrepreneurship by focusing on women led or women owned businesses, encouraging female uptake and use of innovative products and service solutions. The partners were Global fund for women and Graça Machel Trust. Three women entrepreneurs won grants of $10,000 each to amplify their business solutions
• NFNV in partnership with Equileap and Nairobi Securities Exchange launched the first ever Gender Equality report in Africa that assessed 60 leading companies on workplace equality. The resultant Special Report launched in November 2019 is the first report on listed companies in Africa and makes Kenya the first African country to be featured in Equileap’s publications which will play a fundamental role in informing regional and global markets on the advances made on gender equality in the workplace and develop a benchmark to measure other African listed companies.