Women from rural areas and townships in South Africa fail to manage their finances well due to a lack of understanding basic financial literacy principles. We believe this is due to lack of access to financial literacy training. The high unemployment rate measured at 42.5% for women aged 15 to 64 compels women to trade for sustenance and to save in savings organisations such as stokvels. These circumstances also force them to borrow from informal credit organisations such as loansharks without any financial literacy background or understanding.

In South Africa Alone, approximately 10 million people were saving through informal mechanism (savings groups) in 2019 (increase from 7 million in 2018). The main reason for this is because these is the only model that these individuals can use and is accessible to them.

Untum Financial Solutions was created to bridge the gap in financial literacy for individuals, especially women, from townships and rural areas. We believe that everyone has the potential to be financially literate with the right tools and good education. By providing these tools and training, Untum helps people to be independent of handouts and plan their finances for improved relationships with their finances. The result is that people become self-sufficient because they now understand their relationship with money.

The training involves information on topics such as  

• What is financial literacy

• Financial planning

• Budgeting

• Savings

• Investment

• Accessing credit

• The dangers of over-indebtedness and default