Banks ignore black women

"We've been speaking to a few of them (banks) and saying: 'If you mean business and want to grow your business financing in the coming years, you can't ignore this market'," said Natalie Africa, a senior program officer at the International Finance Corp, the World Bank's private sector arm.

Some 38% of black South African women are formally banked compared with 44% of black men and 94% and 91%, respectively, of white men and white women, according to the joint study by the IFC, South Africa's department of trade and industry and Finmark Trust.

The IFC plans to consult with South Africa's four largest banks, as well as supermarkets and cellphone service providers, who are more likely to reach rural women, in an effort to expand service to this niche market.

"Just speaking to one of the banks I said: 'Do you realise that black women are the largest pool of self-employed?' They didn't know that," Africa added.

South Africa is not the only country in Sub-Saharan Africa to ask the IFC to parse its labour market data to identify niche markets among women, IFC's manager of Gender Entrepreneurship Markets Amanda Ellis said.

Five African banks - Nigeria's Access Bank, Uganda's DFCU, Egypt's CIB, South Africa's WDB and Tanzania's Exim Bank - attended this year's Global Banking Alliance for Women meeting this month for the first time.

Data shows that women across the world are starting new businesses at increasing rates. In some countries, the percentage growth for women-owned businesses is actually greater than for private firms as a whole, Ellis said.