Sub-Sahara Africa has the highest entrepreneurship rate globally as 20 per cent of its women in their working age are entrepreneurs.
This were the findings of a session hosted jointly by Standard Chartered Kenya and Strathmore University where it emerged that access to finance, conducive environment and proper business incubation has not deterred women entrepreneurs from succeeding.
The findings revealed that an estimated that 17 per cent of women in developing countries run their own businesses while 35 per cent aspire to have their own enterprises.
According to Strathmore Vice Chancellor, Vincent Ogutu, women play a crucial part in the Small and Medium Enterprises contributing to 70 per cent to the jobs in Kenya.
Speaking during the launch of the 6th cohort of Women in Tech programme, experts pointed out that supporting the rising number of women using technology in their businesses is the one of the solutions to Kenya’s problems.
“When supported well and offered the conducive environment, women entrepreneurs have the potential to control Sh206 trillion of the global GDP,” said Ndovu App founder, Radhika Bachu.
Currently the women entrepreneurs in the world control Sh72 trillion of the global GDP, with 30 per cent of Kenyan businesses being owned by women.
The experts were speaking during the launch of the sixth cohort of the Women in Tech Incubator Program where 15 women businesses will be incubated and seven will emerge winners with their businesses given a capital injection of Sh1.3million.
“Most of women have fantastic business ideas but are not able to scale it up. We have come with the Women in Tech Program to mentor, prepare in advance, offer financial support to women entrepreneurs at the completion of the program,” said Standard Chartered Head of Corporate affairs Brand and Marketing, Joyce Kibe.
Since its inception in 2017, the programme has generated revenue Sh491 million shillings for the women in the program while its alumni also have raised Sh. 116 million as seed funding.
