At least half of the women entrepreneurs held at least a bachelor’s degree in nine of the ten countries studied. Only one in ten women said they had started their own business for lack of employment opportunities or owing to poor treatment at the hands of their previous employer. Many women reported having been motivated to launch their own business by success stories in their wider entourage or those relayed by the media, including social media. Of the 125 women who specified that their start-up finance had come from a source other than a start-up incubator, half (62 respondents, 49.6%) had obtained a bank loan and one-third (42 respondents, 33.6%) had used their own funds or those of family or close friends. In some cases, the women benefited from more than one of these services. This was followed by finance (27%), encouragement (25%), co-working space (14%) and equipment, including software (10%). Training was the most common form of support received from incubators (57%). More than one-third (39%) of respondents were aware of the existence of a local incubator for tech start-ups and one-quarter of these women (24%) reported having received support from one. When the women were asked what kind of support they would most wish to obtain from their government or prospective partners, financial support came second only to training. Seven in ten of the women surveyed cited this obstacle. This was followed by textiles (13.8%), services (such as accounting), web platforms (8.3%), beauty and personal care (6.9%), digital marketing and services (6.9%).Īccess to start-up finance was the most commonly identified barrier. ![]() One-quarter of the women worked in the food sector (26.4%). Nearly one-third of the women surveyed used the Internet to promote their business (30.8%) and one in four (25.4%) reached out to customers via social media. These ranged from traditional and solar ovens to sewing machines, mills, kilns, digital design software and social media platforms. The survey found that eight out of ten respondents used technologies in their businesses. Reasons given for not formally registering their business included considerations of cost and the complexity of bureaucratic procedures. Some of the women surveyed explained their reluctance to register or patent their product or process by the fact that they ran an informal business. Others reported having registered their product with regulatory bodies like the Food and Drugs Board in Ghana.įive women described the process for registering their intellectual property as being lengthy, costly and/or bureaucratic, and other women lamented the lack of information and guidance available to them on the patenting process. ![]() Of the women who said they had innovated, 8 had created an application for a mobile phone alone or in partnership and 17 had patented their invention.
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