Contextualising Women’s Entrepreneurship in Africa

Abstract

Entrepreneurship is a catalyst for development and growth and has contributed significantly to recent positive economic trends in Africa. Female entrepreneurship positively impacts poverty alleviation and socio-economic development. Yet women make up the majority of the world’s poor, and are in the minority as entrepreneurs everywhere except Africa. Here, women dominate the informal sector and strengthening their capacity for full economic participation is now recognised as a factor to drive growth. The roots of African female entrepreneurship predate colonisation, which resulted in gendering of work and women’s marginalisation from the mainstream economy. Post-independence much has been done to bring women back into the mainstream but obstacles remain to their full economic participation. African entrepreneurship research focuses on factors including institutional voids, capacity building, resources and markets.