The growth of small-scale and medium enterprises (SMEs) owned by women in Kenya is one of the prerequisites of fulfilling the Sustainable Development Goals (SGSs) and achieving vision 2030.
Women are able to empower themselves economically through their productive activities, which also allows them to make a significant contribution to the overall development of the Kenyan economy.
Female entrepreneurial activities, especially in SME production activities, whether in the formal or informal sectors not only provide a source of economic empowerment but also has a positive impact socially for the women themselves.
Reality is, women do not have access to the same opportunities that men do in many societies. Progress has been achieved in Kenya through allowing women to have access to health protection as well as education. However, other opportunities, particularly in the economic and political fields, have remained limited.
It is necessary to make conscious efforts so as to enable female entrepreneurs to make better-informed choices economically that will enable them to make positive changes in the businesses, therefore becoming more competitive in the different sectors that they have ventured in.
Kenyan female-owned businesses are hindered by a number of challenges. The main challenges being the lack of skills as well as limited access or completely no access to funding.
There is a need to create a conducive environment for female entrepreneurs in small and medium enterprises. Moreover, facilitating economic growth as well as bringing forth equal development, strengthening female SMEs, the creation of long-term employment opportunities, give a basis for the SMEs, as well as create a balance where there is preferential treatment of the larger enterprises over female entrepreneurs.
Over 50 percent of female entrepreneurs often encounter gender-related challenges in the process of setting up new businesses in addition to running or growing existing businesses. Women are hindered by factors such as religion, culture as well as tradition.
There are a lot of challenges as well in borrowing financing from banks, in addition to the informal networks. The most common challenge that these women face is the difficulty women have accessing loans and other financial services.
Women primarily rely on “merry-go-rounds” or Chamas which tend to offer them informal lending. Here, each member of the circle contributes a certain small amount of money at a regular interval of either daily, weekly or monthly, and on a regular basis, the pooled money is given to one member of the group, in turn.
While it is possible for women to access formal loans at financial institutions, numerous challenges dissuaded them. Key challenges including the need for them to show business records, lengthy waiting times following submission of loan applications; the need for collateral; and the common requirement that a male member of the family guarantees the loan.
Given the difficulty of obtaining individual loans, many women rely on accessing loans in cooperative groups. Accessing group loans, often through merry-go-rounds, is one of the more viable options for businesswomen in Kenya; however, this strategy is not without its disadvantages. Group loans require a great amount of trust among group members and often this trust is lacking. Stories of group members who failed to pay back their loans are common.
With such challenges in place, the Barclays Bank of Kenya decided to form a partnership with the International Trade Centre (ITC) with the main aim of connecting one million women entrepreneurs to markets by 2020.
Barclays Bank entered into a partnership with ITC and set aside a total of 5 billion shillings’ loan kitty to offer financial solutions to women’s business enterprises.
Through the partnership, Barclays Bank intends to equip 10,000 women entrepreneurs with new skills and connect them to international trade opportunities in an area which is currently dominated by men.
Barclay’s intents to leverage its expertise in financial services while ITC employs its experience in business development to offer local women entrepreneurs support in critical areas, including financial management, in order to help them create and maintain links to international markets.
These training are to be carried out through 50 workshops delivered by business support organizations, 54 webinars on market analysis tools, 27 e-learning courses, 9 business generation activities to connect 275 WBEs to buyers and 5 trade fairs.
In Kenya, SME’s contribute 1.4 trillion to the country’s annual GDP with 48 percent of these SMEs run by women. Also according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity Kenya is the 106th largest export economy in the world with our main exports being tea (123 billion shillings), horticulture (101 billion shillings), apparel & clothing (28 billion shillings), coffee (21 billion shillings), and tobacco & tobacco products (16 billion shillings).
Through the ‘SheTrades’ initiative, women will be equipped to be able to access the international market which will, in turn, increase their revenues. To this end, ITC launched an App that allows women to register, interact and connect with other women entrepreneurs and companies across the globe.
Barclays has committed to support the initiative to the tune of 70 million shillings over the next 5 years.