Women’s empowerment academy could also focus on bigger markets

So far a batch of 32 women has been put to 13 weeks of training in commerce and entrepreneurship, courtesy of a US Academy of Women Entrepreneurs (AWE) programme. This effort is consonant with usual US targeted development efforts, which have women’s empowerment resonance and quite often targeting youths to access applicable skills.

With statutory initiatives like setting aside 10 per cent of district council earnings for loaning to women and youth, as well as a battery of other instruments by small and medium financial institutions, there is plenty that a woman with usable skills can put herself to do. The overall goal is to make women more visible in independent economic activities that have a good chance of weathering the challenges that startups ordinarily face, as a dimension of empowerment as a whole. It changes the face of society as it generates more equitable, less violent domestic ties.

When initiatives of this sort are put up, one unavoidable parameter that each prospective unit that the newly fangled entrepreneurs will be putting their minds to sort out is markets.  Too often small investment units pile up usable cash into an effort that is somewhat misplaced and soon runs out of steam, abundant examples being in money transfer (taking over from selling mobile phone vouchers at the start), that the supply of innovators soon clouds out effective market need for the service. That is obviously the case within the perimeter where the service is being offered.

At the political level, there is considerable emphasis on agricultural initiatives especially in export-oriented farming, whether it is traditional cash crops or horticultural produce. Here it is easy to notice that the kind of enterprise that women entrepreneurs can more easily pursue are linked with limited possibility of accessing wide expanses of land, which characterizes most traditional cash crops. It follows that limited access to rentable farms for instance, or urban business premises for service pursuits, are more suitable for women entrepreneurs, generally.

One area that is hard to fathom by a random effort is how far there is possible convergence between entrepreneurship opportunities and market feasibility, as it is evident that the rate of failure of startups is usually high. Yet this failure doesn’t always reflect limited total demand but poor location or market focus, etc. and without widening markets, increased uptake, no science of how to locate markets can help any sort of entrepreneurs, not just women or youth starters as in this case. That is where complex economic issues come up, that instead of just offering training for entrepreneurs, US agencies can set up recyclable loan facilities in banks to ease lending, the acquisition of landed property to enhance overall circulation of money, widening target markets.