female entrepreneurship in africa

These days, countries all around the globe are noticing global advancements thanks to logical and technological advancement and changes. Along these lines; creations, developments, new items, and new procedures are essential like never before. This is why there is a need to create more momentum for entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is an impetus of the economic development of a nation or continent. Africa is the fastest growing population in the world and therefore needs to foster economic growth to support its youth. Therefore, there is a need to develop this continent's accessible assets – work, innovation, and capital. Entrepreneurship in this environment is key to developing sustainable employment for people, particularly women.

The issues and barriers experienced by female entrepreneurs are so numerous that they have limited the number of women who start up their enterprises, therefore limiting innovation within the continent. Gender bias and socio-cultural norms play a huge role in the limits that female entrepreneurs face in developing their businesses. According to the McKinsey Institute, in August 2016, in the private sector in Africa, only 5% of women were CEO’s, 29% were senior managers, and 44% had senior positions. Seeing as women represent more than 50 percent of Africa’s population, these statistics are particularly worrying. It is estimated that Africa has occurred an annual loss of 95 billion USD due to the barriers that women face in the labor world. You cannot overlook over half of your population in a territory and still expect to fully maximize your capabilities. African leaders need to make proactive efforts to support the advancement female entrepreneurship for the overall benefit of the continent’ economic development.

There are a few key barriers that deter African female entrepreneurs, for example, both formal and informal education, social attitudes, legitimate legal barriers (such as the fact that some African nations still discriminate against women obtaining loans), and absence of access to certain business sectors, and systems. Most of the female entrepreneurs need to depend on self-created funds amid the start-up time of their business. Bank advances and loans have are granted in a minority of cases and are usually joined to some type of self-created account. Additionally, obtaining the authorization to practice an entrepreneurial activity is a time-consuming and difficult process.

Unlike men, women usually get funding based on their track record and not on their potential. This insinuates that they will need to make considerable strides in developing their business by themselves before getting any help. Is there really an explanation as to why women are horrendously underserved by private banks, financial speculators, public lenders, and financial specialists? The appropriate response may lie in the basic certainty that the majority of leaders are still men, some who may have an unconscious bias towards women. The time has come to put every one of our hands to the task, to take account and utilize all our human resources to make Africa's development a reality.