The Need To Support Women Entrepreneurs And Catapulting Them To Leadership Positions

Article 27(8) of the Constitution of Kenya 2010 provides that the State shall take steps to ensure that not more than two-thirds of members of all elective and appointive positions are not of the same gender.

Years after the promulgation of the Constitution of Kenya 2010, there is yet to be enacted specific legislation to operationalize this constitutional provision on gender equality.

Gender inequality is not something new in Kenya. It has been here since time immemorial and when it comes to running businesses, the idea of female entrepreneurs managing a company would have always seemed ambitious.

With discrimination and gender inequality being factors working against them, women entrepreneurs in Kenya have taken the bull by the horns and started their rise to reclaiming their positions and running enterprises.

Taking the lead in entrepreneurship now is a matter of choice and women are no longer restricting themselves to certain sectors but their skill and ingenuity span across sectors – from conventional ones such as food processing, agro-products, handicrafts, and textiles, to others such as real estate development, Pharmaceuticals, hospitality, tourism, and complex manufacturing.

Today’s start-up culture in Kenya is tailored towards empowering women to be their own bosses and earn their own salary, defining how they want to work and making the balance of career and family life easier. At the same time, even with the glaring challenges, entrepreneurship still presents a path for women to close the pay gap and rise to leadership positions across various sectors.

Running their own company also offers the opportunity for women to collaborate with and hire other ambitious, like-minded women, fostering a new generation of women in leadership roles.

For centuries, women have been powerful agents of change whose contributions to society have had far-reaching benefits, diversity, and gender equity in leadership and decision-making tables.

The truth is that women leaders and decision-makers are critical in advancing and furthering economic, social, and political progress.

However, despite the significant contribution of women’s entrepreneurship, women still face numerous barriers and challenges, which continue to hinder them from fully maximizing their entrepreneurial success.

Being a woman entrepreneur in Kenya, for instance, is not a walk in the park. Women entrepreneurs in Kenya face a myriad of challenges ranging from lack of capital, insufficient business management skills, societal biases and prejudice, and work-life balance among others. Other barriers facing these women who want to start a business include insufficient knowledge, networks, and links to high-value markets.

But all is not lost. It is important to note that despite the setbacks, Kenyan banks have started rolling out women-related credit to help women boost their businesses. Some of the lenders such as Absa Bank (She Business) have also started organizing entrepreneurial training sessions for women across the country.

Another organization that has strived to give women a voice is the African Guarantee Fund (AGF), which has now been recognized as a 2X Challenge Investment in recognizing women as a pillar of the development of African economies and focused on increasing their access to finance.

Through Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa (AFAWA), a joint initiative of the African Guarantee Fund and the African Development Bank, AGF, aims to de-risk lending to women within and without the country through its partial guarantees to financial institutions and its capacity development for women entrepreneurs to prepare them for easier access to finance.

The recognition of AGF as a 2X Challenge Investment challenge did not come by chance. For instance;

• Across the AGF business, women represent 30 percent of senior management
• ÁGF, through its AFAWA guarantee for growth program, drives more capital flows to women.
• At the same time, women represent 40 percent of the total workforce in AGF.

The recognition of AGF as a 2X Challenge Investment pegs them as strategic mobilizers of substantial financial resources to advance gender equality in Kenya. There is a need for organizations in Kenya to emulate what AGF is doing in recognizing women as a pillar of the development of African economies through increasing access to finance for women within and without Kenya.

Related Content: How Absa Bank is Helping Women Take Their Businesses To The Next level