Esther Oluku
The Women in Africa (WIA) Initiative through its WIA 54 Programme 2022 is poised to mitigate failure of African women led businesses, the President, WIA Initiative, Ms. Hafsat Abiola, has said.
Speaking with journalists at a get together of selected Nigerian applicants in Lagos recently, Abiola stated that among the reasons why African women led businesses fail is the lack of support they experience while growing their businesses as well as unavailability of access to business mentorship and funding to enable them scale in spite of their ingeniousness.
Through a combination of business trainings, mentorship and funding from leading global partners, participants would be equipped to lead and sustain global business presence and exposure for a more resilient enterprise thereby growing the chain of African women led businesses across the world.
Lamenting the rate at which African women led businesses failed, she said: “African women lead all the world’s women in terms of the rate at which they set up a business but we also lead the world’s women at the rate at which our businesses fail and I think the gap between a woman being bold and courageous enough to start up a business and their business failure is really a reflection of the lack of support and the challenges in the prevailing environment and we need to do something to address those issues. WIA is here for that.
