FATA START UP

The invisible strength of African economies - women entrepreneurs

Did you know that the world record for female entrepreneurship is held by the African continent? Almost one third of entrepreneurs (27%) in Africa are women, despite the fact that most financing beneficiaries are men.

This fact was presented during the webinar Female entrepreneurs, pillars of economic development in Africa organized by CPCCAF, an economic cooperation network serving the African and French-speaking private sector.

No wonder then that we’ve decided to focus specifically on women when we launch FATA START UP, a program aimed at mentoring budding entrepreneurs. The webinar also highlighted some elements that will help us support our future female entrepreneurs:

• the existence of new financing and guarantee mechanisms dedicated to women (African Development Bank group, Ecobank, World Bank, Islamic Bank).

• fundraising efforts are more likely to succeed if your business plan already includes customer pre-financing, hence the need to have a solid concept and sell it before coming to fundraising

• women often lack confidence and ambition when it comes to entrepreneurship: our sorority, mentoring and coaching will help!

During this webinar, two female entrepreneurs caught our attention for the potential synergies that we could develop in the future:

• Charlène-Roknaya Jaye, member of the Empower Women network, based in Canada. She created the digital strategy consulting platform Roetco and of the Penser Demain en Numérique, which works to popularize STEM in French-speaking Africa. For Charlène, digital tools are one of the keys to prosperity in Africa.

• Aissata TAMBADOU, founder of LePlanB.io, a school for No-Code visual programming tools based in Guinea. Its objective is to empower young people, women and CSOs (Civil Society Organizations) in Francophone Africa. Aissata feels that young women should be bold and turn obstacles into opportunities.

As we launch FATA START UP, a program with the explicit goal of supporting business ventures in the digital economy in Africa, Charlène and Aissata’s experience is encouraging. Our goal is to collaborate with the already existing network of organizations supporting female entrepreneurship in West Africa, and we are looking forward to seeing female synergies develop across the continents.

We regularly publish articles to inform our members and partners of the progress and impact of the FATA project. See all articles