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What Are The Driving Growth For Women In Business And Technology

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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advancements are providing Africans with an opportunity to advance ahead of many countries that remain burdened by outdated tech.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 …show more content…

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

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