National Association of Business Women (Nabw) says women-led businesses continue to face challenges to navigate the tough terrain despite the introduction of free market economies determined by demand and supply forces.
The remarks come in the wake of an assessment by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on the status of female entrepreneurship in the sub-Saharan Africa region.
The assessment indicates that Malawi alongside Burundi, Chad and Madagascar have failed to establish an entrepreneurial environment to enable women to engage in entrepreneurship without hurdles.
In an interview yesterday, Nabw executive director Barbara Banda said the operational environment is proving difficult for women businesses to thrive, marred by limited access to finance, markets, networking and technology.
She said this has failed to help bring out the potential that women-led businesses have in the country.
Said Banda: “Access to finance is limited because in most cases, collateral is patriarch, which means women can’t get a loan independent of their husbands unlike when it is a man.
“Financial institutions also require that we give audited statements as an eligibility criterion, but 90 percent of the businesses fail to submit such along with business plans, which they fail to pitch as they are mostly done by consultants.”
Banda also noted that majority of women do not have network, where a lot of information is shared.
“This is even unfavourable when such businesses are not technologically savvy as in this digital age a lot of business information is shared in various digital platforms,” she said.
On her part, Black Indigenous Business Network president Kate Kamwangala said capacity building on policies could help improve the situation, adding that societal expectation creates a fear of failure in women as some businesses are considered manly.
According to the UNDP assessment, the barriers stem from cultural, institutional, economic, political and social contexts as well as their access to a friendly and supportive environment.
Reads the assessment in part: “In Malawi, 73 percent of women are in the labour force, which means they have the potential to contribute to the socio-economic activities of the country as much as men.”
The World Bank puts the global labour force participation rate for women at just over 50 percent, which is indicative of how much women in Malawi can contribute to its economy if their potential were leveraged.
The United Nations General Assembly adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls and to promote sustainable, inclusive economic growth, productive employment and decent work for all.
Entrepreneurship has been proven as one of the strategies that can be used to promote inclusive growth; hence, create employment.
However, despite countries striving to promote entrepreneurship, scores of sub-Saharan African countries are poor as evidenced by low rankings on the Global Entrepreneurship Index.
In a report by Public Knoema Data Hub, Malawi ranked 132 out of 137 on the Global Entrepreneurship Index in 2022.
Speaking in an earlier interview, Ministry of Trade and Industry principal enterprise development officer Lisbert Kumatso urged women entrepreneurs to take advantage of existing laws and regulations to promote economic equality and support small-scale businesses.
She cited the special provisions in the Public Procurement and Disposal of Assets Act, specifically the Micro Small and Medium Enterprises Order of 2020 which facilitates market access for small businesses through government procurement with special treatment for small businesses.
