Driving growth for women in business and technology
How the Standard Bank Incubator is empowering female tech-entrepreneurs in business
The latest technological advancements are providing Africans with an opportunity to advance ahead of many countries that remain burdened by outdated tech. However, slow progress in attaining more female leaders in the field of technology is holding back this advancement.
Women comprise 55% of South Africa’s entire workforce, yet only 20% of ICT professionals are female, according to Global Tech Women. The Standard Bank Incubation Programme founded the Standard Bank Women in Technology Conference to ignite female-driven innovation in business and technology.
The initiative comes as part of Standard Bank
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This starts by acknowledging and assisting female-owned enterprises and business achievements, as women still face many obstacles in business and in the workplace.
“We see the rise of women in technology as being crucial to the success of the continent as a whole,” says Naidoo.
From Standard Bank’s perspective, driving Africa’s growth is not only about facilitating grand infrastructure deals on the continent and providing innovative financial solutions to women that add value to customer lives. Though integral to economic development, such initiatives are pieces of a much larger puzzle.
An important aspect is the support offered to local start-ups through the Standard Bank Incubator in partnership with Liberty, to drive Africa’s growth organically through a grassroots approach where the entities involved are enabled to control their own destiny.
According to Naidoo, the striking feature of all these SMEs is not that they have a strong chance to be profitable and viable, but that they are all born out of a strong humanitarian focus to help their communities. This aligns with Standard Bank’s philosophy of moving Africa forward. Four start-ups progressed to the 2017’s Web Summit to interact with and get exposed to the global tech community.
The companies that attended the 2017’s Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal at the beginning of November are: iSpani – a company that provides data insights, leads and activation events for brands trying to access
In the United States and the majority of other countries, a woman has never been president: men still dominate the economy. These factual sociological, economic and political conditions have a direct impact on what projects women organize and lead.
These women, although they lived in a third world country, have the skill and gumption to go into business for themselves, and “be their own boss”. In the United States, more women have the ability
In this is essay an article by Eileen Pollack which is called “What Really Keeps Woman Out of Tech” will be analyzed. Eileen is director of the Master of Fine Arts project at Michigan University. In addition, she is a novelist and essayist. Why women are avoiding technology majors? The women of 21st century assume that IT is not the best option for them with career. Through personal experience, essay and news an individual can understand that gender matters when choosing a job. There are various reasons why people study faculties or choose to study them. Eileen P. studied and researched about why women do not major in technology. In Eileen Pollack’s essay “What Really Keeps Woman Out of Tech” she argues why females do not study computer engineering,
Women are burdened with many obstacles to achieve equality in the work place. In the corporate and
One can get a sense of her self reflection when she questions her abilities after the disappointment in Nairobi "The question was one of leadership, of having the patience and skills to bring people with me - and I had yet to learn that fully" One can easily forgive the poor narrative and be drawn into structure the book follows, A steep learning and gathering of ideas in the first third of the book, the realization of a dream and the disappointment of the failure of the system in the middle, acute action and accomplishment in the last third. Almost like a Business plan carried out with perfection. One can also overlook the fact that many chapters of the book act as individual case studies, outlining the many challenges faced my Entrepreneurs across the developing world. The loan analysis of a fledging Micro Finance in Nairobi, The startup of a new Micro-Finance Organization Duterimbere, Leadership and Entrepreneurial skills while re-inventing the Blue Bakery, Bringing cost effective Maternal and Eye care to India, Developing a brand name in the face of tight competition in
The development of the female population empowers them to work harder and build stronger families, a richer community, and take pride in their progress. Encouragement improves development on all levels for women, which in turn causes regional growth and progress and closing the development gap.
Despite what some scholars may argue, I believe that Africa already possesses the know-how it needs to advance and ICTs, while useful is many ways, do not bring about meaningful economic improvements in the lives of the
I have a question: when you think of a successful business owner, who do you think of, a man or a women? Unfortunately, when most people think of a success they automatically think of a man because society has instilled in us that men have the most power. There has been improvement already made towards business women, but unfortunately working women still do not have equal rights. Regina Blaszczyk said in the last sixty years there has been revolutionary changes in the status of business women. Between the end of World War II and 1995, women have entered the workforce with larger numbers and have also come in with managerial positions in American corporations( “Women in Business A Historical
ICTs, Africa and you: How do you see the development of the sector in the last 5 years?
The increase of the number of women entering the workplace, especially those issued from higher education has resulted in a movement of change within businesses,
This reality influenced the authors not only to study the field of entrepreneurship following a general and theoretical approach, but to focus on the obstacles women encounter when engaging in entrepreneurship. .At this point the authors questioned themselves: What are the obstacles and risks women face when entering entrepreneurship? Finding the answer to this question will become the base for concretizing the business idea through a business plan. This leads the authors to raise a second
Some very interesting questions come to mind and we will be discussing them at length. The questions are: Why did Monique Mandy fail to launch a new innovation in Tanzania? What effect did country and market conditions have on this? What is the importance of social capital and networks in entrepreneurship? Did Monique learn out of this failure? What would she do or avoid next time? Without discussing and address these questions, this paper would not have properly analyzed the Adesemi Failure as it were.
A few months ago, the think-tank Terangaweb, an independent body marketing itself as "Africa of Ideas", published a ranking of 30 young African entrepreneurs to follow. Entrepreneurial in nature and lead by a willingness to take concrete action, this young business people draw innovative projects, often designed to meet immediate needs and aspirations of the African people. Amongst them are women, including Nigerian Ola Orekunrin, a Physician and founder of the first air ambulance company in West Africa. The South African Rapelang Rabana, founder of Yeigo Communications, a young company developing text and instant messaging services. Progressively, a trend for female entrepreneurship asserts in many African countries and, in many cases with full support of local authorities.
Information Communications Technologies (hereafter referred to as ICTs) have played an invaluable role in empowering women in Africa to enter into the business domain, specifically within the rural, informal business context. However, it is also true that there are many challenges facing African women with regards to the use of ICTs in business enterprises.
Baserup (1970) suggested that women needed to reduce the work loads they had so that they take part in education, projects which will also extend their power in the economy. In addition, Baserup pointed out that women have to receive credit facilities for greater economic projects. For example, Baserup echoed the mechanization of “female farming’ in African women farmers and revolutionarize traditional forms of agriculture for productive efficiency extracted from Schech and Haggis (2000). Rogers (1980) also suggested for a complete overhand of male attitudes against women. Rogers explicitly challenged this in her survey of the FAO institutional arrangement. She concluded that no women were found in field officers in technical division. Rogers (1980) therefore, concluded that women were not only excluded from planning and decision making but were being ignored and overlooked. Furthermore, households were assumed to be male headed which also generalized women as housewives (Rogers 1980:66 in Schech and Haggis, 2000). This shows that women’s work was regarded as non- work due to male bias. However, the WID approach agitated for equity, empowerment, efficiency and equal participation of women in existing structures.