Accra, Ghana, March 30, 2019//- Mrs Samira Bawumia, Wife of Ghana’s Vice President has called for a concerted effort to translate the economic activities engaged by women into profitable ventures to accelerate the country’s socio-economic growth and development.
According to her, investing in women entrepreneurship has a multiplier effects on the lives of the people, hence there is the need for all to support women in business.
Mrs Bawumia made the call at the launch of a report titled: ‘Profiting from Parity: Unlocking the Potential of Women’s Business in Africa’ in Accra.
Mrs Bawumia who joined the World Bank Africa Vice President, Hafez Ghanem as part of his recent three-day visit to Ghana to launch the comprehensive report conducted by the World Bank Group, stressed: “Entrepreneurship is vital for every country’s development, its economic growth and job creation”.
She continued: “Without entrepreneurship, there would be little innovation and productivity”.
Empowering women entrepreneurs, Mrs Bawumia noted had contributed to the smartest economies in today’s strategic development.
Mrs Bawumia maintained that the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) five; aimed to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls by 2030, saying that women and men have equal opportunity to shape their own life and contribute to an enhanced productivity and improved development outcomes.
What government is doing?
Mrs Bawumia said the government had reaffirmed its continuous support to promoting women issues in the country, noting that the Ministry of Business development through the women and the entrepreneurship programme had so far allocated GH¢10 million to support women entrepreneurship.
The Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection, Mrs Cynthia Morrison used the occasion to appeal to the World Bank to increase its sponsorship portfolio to enable her ministry achieve its targets.
What the report saying?
Sub-Sahara Africa has the highest rate of entrepreneurship in the world with approximately 42 per cent of the non-agriculture labour force classified as self-employed and employers, according to the report.
“As a result of this phenomenon, most entrepreneurs are unable to grow their business beyond small scale subsistence operations, which is impeding their contributions to poverty reduction and shared prosperity”.
The report revealed that almost 50 per cent of women in the non-agriculture labour force were entrepreneurs. The World Bank report of 2012 indicated that women were the third largest emerging market after China and India.
The Ghana Statistical Service estimated that women make up about 50.5 per cent of the labour force. In Ghana, about 80 per cent of women are engaged in various economic activities and predominantly operating in small and medium enterprise (SME) sector of the Ghanaian economy.
Challenges and solutions
The report focused on the challenges that African women entrepreneur faced and identifies practical solutions, and called on African government to target on key policy areas to help empower female entrepreneurs.
It also offered policymakers evidence-based guidance on designing programmes to target multiple obstacles and improve the performance of women entrepreneurs.
African Eye Report
