Women who want to start a business in Africa are still too confronted with the inequalities of the labor market. By Dominique Nouvian Ouattara.

Despite their central place in the family and society, African women remain the main victims of poverty. As the World Bank reports, unlike in developed countries, where the layoffs concern more men, the crisis in Africa especially reduces the employment opportunities of women, the first victims of the shrinking workforce.
The major role that women play in the economy is well established. At the UN conferences in Cairo in 1994 and in Beijing in 1995 already, all member states agreed that women participate in development mechanisms. Studies from the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) show that the development of female entrepreneurship has a significant positive impact on reducing household poverty.
Obviously, though the proportion of African women working on their own account varies considerably from one country to another, it remains overall low. According to figures from the Investment Climate and Business Environment Research Fund (CIEA), at the end of the last decade, only 15% of people working on their own account in Morocco were women. This proportion was 23% in Egypt and Algeria, 37% in Côte d’Ivoire, 39% in Madagascar and 51% in Cameroon.

Educational inequalities

If women are victims of inequalities and injustices, they are also the key actors of change. Since poverty particularly concerns them, they must be at the center of all strategies aimed at combating this scourge. No real progress in this area can be achieved without their active participation. This is not only a matter of principle, but also a matter of economic common sense. Women are present in all sectors of the economy, and even if their actual contribution to the GDP of their countries is often overlooked, they play a decisive role in matters of food security and agriculture, promotion of human rights. child and health care provision.
However, especially present in the informal economy, women lack funding, which is an obstacle to the development of their entrepreneurial initiatives. Ensuring their economic and financial independence is therefore an essential step in order to liberate the wealth-creating forces in Africa. We must first find solutions allowing them to reconcile economic activity and family life. We then need to encourage networking of initiatives, so that they can benefit from the advice of people with experience in the business world.
Improving the education system and women’s access to lifelong learning are also challenges that we will have to face. Girls’ schooling is far behind that of boys in sub-Saharan Africa (68 girls per 100 boys), and they are more concerned with dropping out of school. More African girls have to go to school and they have to stay there long enough to acquire the skills necessary for professional action.

The importance of microcredit

Regarding the serious financing problems encountered by women who wish to undertake entrepreneurship, we will have to create bridges between project leaders and investors, and encourage all initiatives that go in this direction, such as the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) launched by the International Finance Corporation (IFC). Women must have access to the means of production, this is an essential condition for development. For example, the World Bank estimates that if they had access to agricultural inputs on the same basis as men, productivity could increase by 10 to 30%.
For my part, I was fortunate to set up the Support Fund for Women of Côte d’Ivoire (FAFCI), which already has more than 110,000 beneficiaries. It is a reduced-rate microcredit fund whose purpose is to help women wishing to create or expand an income-generating activity. I remain convinced that we must all commit ourselves to the extent of our possibilities and that no effort, no help is negligible. This is one of the messages that I would like to convey today to the women of Africa, whose challenges I know not only but also the strength and the energy: your future belongs to you. Many of us want to fight alongside you for a more egalitarian and fairer society. To provide solutions to the problems of women is to provide solutions to the problems of society as a whole. To work for the improvement of the economic and financial conditions of women in Africa is to work for the development of our whole continent and of humanity.

About The Author

CEO AfrikaTech

Comme beaucoup de personnes j’ai connu l’Afrique à travers des stéréotypes : l’Afrique est pauvre, il y a la guerre, famine… Je suis devenu entrepreneur pour briser ces clichés et participer à la construction du continent. J’ai lancé plusieurs entreprises dont Kareea (Formation et développement web), Tutorys (Plate-forme de e-learning), AfrikanFunding (Plate-forme de crowdfunding). Après un échec sur ma startup Tutorys, à cause d’une mauvaise exécution Business, un manque de réseau, pas de mentor, je suis parti 6 mois en immersion dans l’écosystème Tech au Sénégal. J’ai rencontré de nombreux entrepreneurs passionnés, talentueux et déterminés. A mon retour sur Paris je décide de raconter leur histoire en créant le média AfrikaTech. L'objectif est de soutenir les entrepreneurs qui se battent quotidiennement en Afrique en leur offrant la visibilité, les connaissances, le réseautage et les capitaux nécessaires pour réussir. L'Afrique de demain se construit aujourd'hui ensemble. Rejoignez-nous ! LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/boubacardiallo

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