A summit designed to facilitate access to capital financing for women led businesses and women Entrepreneurs will be held on August 3rd in Lusaka.
The summit will be convened under the theme ‘Prepare for the Next Level’, brings together women led companies, project promoters, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMES), investors and Financiers so as to enable female entrepreneurs overcome the perennial barriers of business scalability.
According to the World Bank, Sub-Saharan Africa has one of the highest rate of female entrepreneurship in the world, (~ 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.
Some of the challenges impeding women businesses from scaling include financing barriers and business readiness for bankability. Only about 5 percent of the venture capital funding goes to female led businesses in Africa.
“Achieving gender parity in business financing is key to achieving sustainable development on the continent” said Meklit Haile, one of Drive Africa’s co-Founder and summit organizers.
The program will attract participants from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the Common Market for East and Southern Africa (COMESA). The Minister of Small and Medium and Enterprise Development, Honorable Elias Mpundu will be officiate the summit.
Some of the speakers represented at the summit will include Prospero Limited, the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs, KPMG, Dazzle Angels, Premier Credit, Inside Capital Partners and many more prominent women entrepreneurs, investors, and advisors from Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. A key objective of the summit is to help women led companies to move their companies towards investment readiness and bankability. The summit will also include a short master class session geared towards investors and entrepreneurs on topics such early-stage investing, angel investment, as well as gender investing. The Summit is organized by Drive Africa, an organization that serves as a global investment facilitation platform for African business, innovation, and entrepreneurship.
A convergence of sexual harassment and open prostitution.
Don’t serve them Banana.
But im still waiting to see how far this “Women Empowerment” thing will go. Did also men when they started business had to be empowered by someone else other than their gender? Just asking cos i hop this bais wont create biggere problems in the future. What i foresee, is that, once all women are seated comformtably in higher Offices,they will then run women shows only,men will start getting blocked to work in certain companies. Im currently in Cape Town and i physically know of 1 hair salon where men arent allowed-women only! So this is my fear, give everything to women and they will start fighting you back – using what you gave them. I think its a different story if she earned whatever she has, on her own.