Seedstars‘ Enhancing Women Entrepreneurship in Africa (EWEA) initiative invites applications from women-led small and medium enterprises (WSMEs), community enablers, and entrepreneurship support organizations to participate in its mentoring and skill-building workshop series.
There is an estimated $42 billion funding deficit for African women throughout corporate value chains, which presents a significant barrier for the continent’s female entrepreneurs.
According to the United Nations Global Compact, 56% of women-owned companies in sub-Saharan Africa shut down due to a lack of profitability or an inability to get capital.
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Business women deal with EWEA
According to EWEA, a lack of an enabling environment for women-owned enterprises to improve their talents, prosper, and climb to management roles is one of the major challenges women face in business. However, they are just as effective and growth-oriented as male-owned firms when it comes to potential.
Incubators, accelerators, university-based innovation hubs, maker spaces, technology parks, and co-working spaces are just a few of the promising entrepreneurship support programs that have sprouted up across the continent in recent years to encourage more women to start and grow their own businesses.
Due to a lack of funding, network access, and strategically placed services, these enablers are frequently constrained in the assistance they can offer WSMEs.
“We know that apart from access to financing, women entrepreneurs require skills and a supportive business environment,” says Malado Kaba, Director of Gender, Women, and Civil Society at the African Development Bank. Seedstars is one of ten groups in the African Development Bank’s initial cohort of women entrepreneurs’ enablers. The grants would support 88 organizations, 540 WSMEs, 6,000 mentorship hours, and 90 investors in 11 countries.
The EWEA program, in collaboration with the African Development Bank’s AFAWA initiative and GrowthAfrica, will provide long-term and scalable capacity building, mentorship, funding, and visibility for WSMEs and community enablers in Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Malawi, Morocco, Mozambique, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Zambia.
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Guidelines for women-owned SMBs
The initiative requires the following from regional women entrepreneurs:
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Africa-based;
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Have at least one woman on the founding team; have a digital aspect to their offering (mobile app, online store, SaaS solution, etc.); and
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Show interest in investment preparation.
The Seedstars network will provide assistance to WSMEs who participate in the EWEA program, and the Seedstars Online Academy will give them access to the Investment Readiness Program.
Community enablers
Enabler beneficiaries are organizations that help entrepreneurs and fall under one of the following categories:
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WSMEs-only advocacy organizations,
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Organizations that combine activities geared at women with activities that are gender-neutral, as well as gender-neutral
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ESOs that seek to increase their ability to assist WSMEs.
Through the Seedstars Online Academy, participating organizations will have access to mentoring, seminars, and a capacity-building program.
