Opportunities for Women Entrepreneurs in Nigeria

In June, I had the wonderful opportunity to moderate a panel at the launch of the Standard Chartered Bank #SCWomeninTech programme.

#SCWomeninTech is a programme designed specifically by Standard Chartered for women-led technology ventures (specifically, early-to-mid stage professionals). The selected women founders would receive pre-seed funding, high-quality mentoring, acceleration and post-accelerator commercial support to help scale their respective entrepreneurial ventures.

In Nigeria, 49.34 per cent of the total populations comprises of women and girls. However, fewer income generating opportunities for the population at large has left many women lagging behind in terms of economic empowerment either through paid employment or the entrepreneurial ventures.

The 2017 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM)study shows an estimated 163 million women entrepreneurs across the world. However the prospects for women-founded businesses are dismal compared to men’s. For a start, women are more likely to operate as a single founder business with no employees and are less likely to scale their businesses and more likely to remain small to medium and less likely to scale to global reach. Women-founded businesses are also less likely to enter newer and less-tested markets. Technology is one of these less-frequently charted sectors for women.

The Standard Chartered incubator was designed as a way to equip women entrepreneurs with the skills, knowledge and confidence to grow and scale their businesses and establish a foundation for strengthening cooperation and network-building among women-focused incubators.

To set the context for the problem this incubator was aimed at addressing, I moderated a discussion with 5 women working in various aspects of the technology and entrepreneurship spectrum.

The speakers were:

Olga Arara-Kimani is the Regional Head, Corporate Affairs, Brand and Marketing (CABM), Africa and the Middle East for Standard Chartered Bank. In this role she is responsible for executing the strategic agenda for CABM, supporting the bank’s businesses in achieving sustainable growth targets through differentiated client communication and engagement.

Bode Abifarin is the Chief Operating Officer at Flutterwave, where she is responsible for managing the operations of the organisation. Flutterwave was launched with the goal to build digital payments infrastructure for Africa and to enable businesses receive or make payments across Africa and globally.

Odunayo Eweniyi is the co-founder & Chief Operations Officer, PiggyVest. She previously co-founded pushcv.com, one of the largest job sites in Africa with the largest database of pre-screened candidates.

Abisoye Ajayi-Akinfolarin is the Founder and Executive Director of Pearls Africa, an NGO focused on promoting the cause and advancement of vulnerable young girls and women.

Adenike Adeyemi is a development sector professional with 16 years of experience in non-profit management, enterprise development, education and youth enablement strategies. As the Chief Executive Officer for FATE Foundation, she leads the fulfilment of the organisation’s mission to enable aspiring and emerging Nigerian entrepreneurs start, grow and scale their businesses.

Fun fact: Odunayo shared that at the the time, only 36 black women-led businesses in the world have raised at least $1 million. in Nigeria, 5 women-led businesses have raised this amount. Depending on how you look at it. you could say that either Nigerian women are not doing too badly considering the global numbers or that we have a terribly long way to go.

What accounts for the differences in scale of female and male led businesses? Adenike shared how women do not think big enough and limit the growth of their businesses by their small-sized aspirations for their ventures. Many businesses started by women are initially to provide for their family and that same thinking, it was believed, carries on influencing business strategy and opportunity where women invest their revenue into their families instead of back into the business.

Bode shared that the business leader must be clear about their objectives i.e. what do I want this business to be? After Flutterwave clarified their goals, they benchmarked themselves to the highest global standards (afterall today, thanks to technology, businesses can more easily enter into and services markets in other countries).

Flutterwave identified their primary market and supporting customers and defined objectives for each group of customers.

Defining business objectives also includes being clear about the kind of organisational culture that the business will want for its people i.e. a more formal hierarchical culture or a more informal and casual culture (or the countless variants in-between).

Odunayo shared how PiggyVest was able to improve their tool and service through elements of gamification. They would also ask for feedback from users through Instagram and Twitter polls.

Odunayo talked a bit about PiggyVest’s fundraising and recommended looking for investors who are keen to add value to the business to help it build the capacity it needs to grow and not just investors who will give money. She shared that the advice, support and other important resources that their investors have given have been worth more than just money, in helping them achieve the kind of scale they have today.

Olga spoke about why Standard Chartered was investing in women entrepreneurs and about the bank’s plans to be a digital bank by 2020.

The final words from each speaker were:

• Adenike: Know your space and be involved in shaping policy within your industry. Innovation always happens faster than any regulation, so technology entrepreneurs tend to operate in a space policed by outdated laws or not policed at all. So, contribute to setting the legal frameworks that can really help your businesses and others like it thrive.
• Abisoye: Keep accurate and comprehensive financial records, so that you are investment-ready. Invest in youth (as Pearls Africa does) and equip them to create jobs for themselves and others.
• Bode: Build a great product for your customers and focus on building for volume, so that you can scale-up to as big a market as possible.
• Odunayo: Women are breaking into technology with less regard for gender-based stereotypes. This increased female representation is a beautiful thing and serves as examples to the future generations of women of what is possible for them in tech.
• Olga: The future is digital and the future is now, so women (non-tech.) entrepreneurs need to pay more attention to how technology can help them do more.