Profiting from Parity : Unlocking the Potential of Women's Business in Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rate of entrepreneurship in the world, with approximately 42 percent of the non-agricultural labor force classified as self-employed or employers. Yet most entrepreneurs are unable to grow their businesses beyond...
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| Format: | Report |
| Language: | English |
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2019
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/501971553025918098/Full-Report http://hdl.handle.net/10986/31421 |
| Summary: | Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rate
of entrepreneurship in the world, with approximately 42
percent of the non-agricultural labor force classified as
self-employed or employers. Yet most entrepreneurs are
unable to grow their businesses beyond small-scale
subsistence operations, impeding their contribution to
poverty reduction and shared prosperity. This is
particularly so for women. This new
report, “Profiting from Parity: Unlocking the Potential of
Women’s Businesses in Africa”, produced by the World Bank
Group’s Africa Gender Innovation Lab and the Finance,
Competitiveness and Innovation Global Practice, seeks to
focus attention on the challenges that Africa’s women
entrepreneurs face and identify practical solutions. The
report draws on new, high-quality, household and firm level
data to present the clearest evidence to date about the
barriers to growth and profitability faced by women
entrepreneurs. It goes beyond looking at contextual,
endowment and household restrictions in isolation, and,
through deep-dive analysis, uncovers new evidence on how
social norms, networks and household-level decision making
contribute to business performance. It analyzes how they are
linked to each other and to women’s strategic business
decisions. The report offers policy makers evidence based
guidance on designing programs to target multiple obstacles
and improve the performance of women entrepreneurs. |
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