Accelerating Women’s Entrepreneurial Dynamics in Africa
Women in Africa - Improve access to financing to support the entrepreneurial dynamic.
Africa is fertile ground for female entrepreneurship: the continent has the highest rate of entrepreneurial activity for women in the world: 24% of African women entrepreneurs vs. 11% of women in the Southeast Asia & Pacific countries, 9% of women in the Middle East, 6% of women in Europe and Central Asia. Very large disparities between men and women, however, are remaining. Three main factors lie at the source of African women’s financial difficulties:
We have established a segmentation of countries according to the “Women entrepreneurship readiness” index, which identifies four types of countries: the “locomotives,” the “challengers,” the “next emerging countries” and the “resurgent countries.”
These four groups of countries are defined as follows:
African women’s difficulties in accessing financing vary according to sources of funding and countries: while microcredit is distributed equitably among women on the continent, other sources of funding show significant differences between men and women.
Discover in our study our six recommendations to use mesofinance as a lever to accelerate the entrepreneurial dynamics of African women and five levers to bring together the socio-economic situation of women entrepreneurs and mesofinance offerings.
Women in Africa - Improve access to financing to support the entrepreneurial dynamic.