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Empowering 300 million African Women: "SHE RETIRES" A Gender-Responsive Policy Brief for Retirement Planning

African women face institutional barriers and systemic risks that negatively impact their ability to plan for retirement. These structural challenges create a situation where many women approach old age with lower savings, weaker pension coverage, higher lifetime costs, and longer life expectancy compared to men. Without targeted policy interventions, a significant proportion of African women risk entering retirement with inadequate financial resources, exposing them to poverty and economic vulnerability in later years.


The “SHE RETIRES” gender-responsive policy framework addresses the key retirement planning risks facing women in Africa and proposes policy interventions that governments, financial institutions, and social protection systems can adopt. The framework highlights four major structural risks affecting women’s retirement security: women’s dominance in informal employment, lifetime income inequality and caregiving interruptions, the financial burden associated with the “pink tax” and healthcare costs, and persistent gaps in financial literacy and retirement education.


Risk 1: Prevalence of Women in Informal Employment

Prevalence of Women in Informal Employment, Reliance on Informal Savings System, Low Financial Inclusion, and Low Pension Coverage

A significant factor affecting women’s retirement preparedness in Africa is the high concentration of women in the informal economy. The informal sector is the largest employer of labour in Africa, employing about 80-90% of Africa’s workforce. 90% of all employed women in sub-Saharan Africa work in the informal sector, relatively higher than the statistics for men1. This lack of structured conditions of service, including the low to zero pension coverage for informal sector impacts women in Africa. Using 2021 data from the African Development Bank, approximately 37% of women in Sub-Saharan Africa have a bank or mobile money account, compared to 48% of men, a massive 11-percentage-point gender gap2.


Policy recommendation to address Risk 1

There is a need to adopt special micro-pension social security programs specifically targeted at women working in the informal sector in Africa. The Rwanda Ejo Heza defined contribution pension scheme can serve as an adaptable model for the continent. The program is a flexible, mobile-based voluntary savings scheme that provides pension coverage for formal and informal sector workers, with government-matched contributions for the poorest contributors and maturing for payout at age 553.


Risk 2: Reduced Lifetime Savings due to the Gender Pay Gap

Reduced Lifetime Savings due to the Gender Pay Gap, Unpaid Career Interruptions for Caregiving Responsibilities, Income Inequality, and Longer Life Span than Men

Women end up in retirement with less savings than men. In Africa, women in Nigeria in similar roles still earn 20–30% less than men4, while women in East and South Africa earn 81 cents for every dollar men earn doing the same work, and to make up for this gap, women have to work 2.5 more days. Women lose more pay to unpaid work as they are double penalized for motherhood and caregiving responsibilities, which costs women 3.5 times more hours daily spent on the family that could have been used for gainful work activities4. Women also have a higher life expectancy than men in Africa, consistent with global trends, meaning women in Africa are likely to live longer than their spouses, requiring more savings for retirement than men to avoid outliving their savings5.


Strategic Policy and Program Recommendation

Beyond enacting and enforcing an equal pay policy, governments in Africa should consider the following to ensure that more women are not left with lower retirement savings than men. These measures include:


  • Implementing Special Pension Savings Credits for Caregiving Policy to give "care credits" or "childcare credits" that reward periods of unpaid caregiving as productive contributing time to the retirement savings process. The UK’s Carer’s Credit, a National Insurance (NI) credit scheme for people caring for others for 20 hours a week, can serve as an adaptable model in Africa6.

  • Provide Social Security Grants to Women in Their Golden Years Policy. The Social Assistance Grants for Empowerment (SAGE) in Uganda is a good model. The SAGE program is a Ugandan Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development (MGLSD initiative under the Expanding Social Protection (ESP) program, providing direct cash transfers to vulnerable groups, primarily elderly beneficiaries aged 80+ or 60+. It aims to reduce poverty, enhance consumption, and improve food security for households7

  • Adopt Unisex (Gender-Neutral) Annuity Calculation Policy: African governments must mandate pension fund custodians and administrators to use unisex, rather than gender-based, mortality tables to calculate annuity payments, which generally favour women, compensating for their higher life expectancy, resulting in higher payments for them compared to gender-specific tables.

  • Eliminate Gender Based Retirement Age Disparity Policies: Some countries in Africa allow discriminatory policies on the pensionable age for men and women. Cape Verde, for example, has the pensionable age for Men as 65 and for women at 60. Also, Algeria has 60 for men and 55 for women8. This will prevent forced, early, and lower-value annuity calculations for women.

 

Risk 3: Pink Tax Penalization

Pink Tax Penalization: Higher Cost of Living and Healthcare for Women

The Pink tax is a subtle, often hidden, systemic surcharge on feminine products and services leading to higher living costs for women. Many women are unaware of these pricing differences, which can lead to higher expenses for women in retirement. In Nigeria, shaving razors and lotions specifically marketed to women are more expensive than those marketed to men9. Haircuts for women also tend to cost more than those for men. Additionally, women face higher healthcare costs due to increased use of healthcare services, out-of-pocket payments, and greater risks linked to the triple burden of disease—covering communicable diseases, non-communicable diseases, and reproductive health issues.


Strategic Policy and Program Recommendation

In response to this retirement structural risk, policy interventions should target the following;

  • Eliminate gender discriminatory pricing for products and services

  • Implement gender supportive and reflective tariff policy on key reproductive products for women, like tampons, and family planning products.

  • Implement a Gender Responsive Budgeting framework that prioritizes fiscal and monetary policies that drive support for funding women's interests before and after retirement

  • Implement social security plans for women’s healthcare needs before and in retirement


Risk 4: Lack of Financial Planning

Lack of Financial Planning, Investment, and Retirement Education by Women in Africa

Globally, data shows that a gender financial literacy gap exists between women and men. In a 2020 study by the OECD, on average, men scored higher in financial literacy tests than their female counterparts by 4 points out of 100, with the difference larger than 10 points in some countries10. This gender financial literacy gap portends grave consequences for the financial inclusion of women, their ability to access financial incentives and support, their competence and willingness to make investments, and the overall ability to even make an adequate financial plan for their retirement.

While specific data does not exist on gender financial literacy in Africa, African women are also exposed to the vagaries of a lack of financial, investment, and retirement planning education.


Strategic Policy and Program Recommendation

  • Savings and microfinance solutions are proven practical solutions that can improve the overall financial knowledge of the women beneficiaries

  • Implement policies mandating commercial deposit banks and investment firms to dedicate significant budget to financial and investment literacy programs for women

  • Implement policies that mandate pension custodians and fiduciaries to dedicate considerable budget to retirement planning education programs for women, both in the formal and informal sectors.


Conclusion

African women face a combination of structural, economic, and institutional barriers that significantly undermine their ability to prepare for a financially secure retirement. The SHE RETIRES policy framework provides a comprehensive gender-responsive strategy to address these risks. By expanding pension coverage for informal workers, closing wage and savings gaps, reducing gender-based economic burdens, and strengthening financial literacy programs, African governments can build more inclusive retirement systems. This requires wide stakeholder collaboration, advocacy, and support from the International Labour Organization (ILO), national labour organizations and unions, employers of labour, Civil Society groups, social advocacy movements, women NGOs, national human resource development institutions, the legislature, and the financial/pension fiduciaries.


References

  1. The State of the Informal Economy in Africa During the COVID-19 Pandemic https://gjia.georgetown.edu/2022/05/11/the-state-of-the-informal-economy-in-africa-during-the-covid-19-pandemic/ 

  2. Accelerating Action to Bridge the Financial Inclusion Gap https://www.africanenda.org/en/blog/2025/accelerating-action-to-bridge-the-financial-inclusion-gap 

  3. EjoHeza Start early and reap the rewards. https://www.rssb.rw/scheme/ejo-heza 

  4. BBC Africa https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ry5FKSjY9rg 

  5. Women’s health in the African Region https://files.aho.afro.who.int/afahobckpcontainer/production/files/Womens_Health_Regional_Factsheet.pdf 

  6. Carer's Credit https://www.gov.uk/carers-credit 

  7. Uganda Social Assistance Grants for Empowerment (SAGE ) https://mglsd.go.ug/social-assistance-grants-for-empowerment-sage/ 

  8. Pensionable Ages https://www.issa.int/databases/country-profiles/pensionable-ages#:~:text=Table_title:%20Pensionable%20ages%20Table_content:%20header:%20%7C%20Country,pensionable%20age:%2060%20%7C%20:%2060%20%7C 

  9. Pink Tax: African women spend an unfairly high amount on lifestyle products compared to men https://africa.businessinsider.com/local/lifestyle/pink-tax-african-women-spend-an-unfairly-high-amount-on-lifestyle-products-compared/dgdwlp7 

  10. Pink Tax: The hidden cost of being a woman https://hervest.ng/insights/pink/ 

  11. Women and financial literacy: Closing the gender gap- https://n26.com/en-eu/blog/women-and-financial-literacy-closing-the-gender-gap   

About The Author

Dr. Olayiwola Oladapo is an experienced futurist, strategist, human capital, organizational development expert, retirement planning, and policy expert with deep knowledge of Africa’s private & public sectors. He founded the Africa Public Policy and Governance Network (APPGN) and is a prolific policy analyst focusing on African development issues. His books include "Retirement Reinvented, Deconstructed: Game-Changing Strategies for Blissful Retirement," "The Richest Man in Retireland," and "The Reinvented Billionaires' Mindset." He is the CEO of SYA Retiretech company, Africa’s first Retiretech organization. He can be reached at droladapo@syaretire.tech or visit https://syaretire.tech/.



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