Entreprenelle partners with the British Council to encourage female entrepreneurs in Egypt
According to studies from Crunchbase,15.8 percent of all the companies in the world have at least one female founder. The story is similar in Egypt, as the number of female entrepreneurs is low in the country, despite the rise of the startup culture over the past decade. In the MENA region, Egypt has the lowest number of female entrepreneurs.
The Egyptian government is working relentlessly to boost SMEs and startups in the country, as it is trying to increase the contribution of SMEs in the economy. The government hopes to remove the gender disparity with newly introduced policies and programs. However, the structural barriers women face while entering businesses are not being addressed properly. Women in Egypt don’t have access to financial and non-financing services, markets, business networks and so on.
Regardless of the barriers, the number of businesses owned by women has recently increased in Egypt’s big cities like Alexandria and Cairo thanks to improved access to markets and business networks.
Entreprenelle, a social enterprise, has emerged to address and remove the structural barriers faced by women. The organization aims to economically empower women through training, education and linking them to all available resources. The founders of Entreprenelle are thinking of expanding its operations in governorates like Mansoura, Assiut, Aswan, Minya and Sohag.
Entreprenelle has kicked off its 2019 social impact entrepreneurship program, in association with the British Council. The objective of this program is to increase the number of female entrepreneurs in Egypt.
“Entreprenelle focuses a lot on tailoring and customizing the training material based on the needs assessment for each city, to assure that they deliver a program of real value towards more creative communities, hubs and personalities,” Roaa Ahmed, project manager at Entreprenelle, told Egyptian Streets.
According to Egyptian Streets, this program has a short term and a long term plan. The short term plan is to deliver a 3 day long intensive training session, and the long term plan is to build, follow up and maintain the support of local individuals and communities for females in business.
“In Mansoura, the socially creative program had 100+ females learning and developing throughout the 3 days and a couple of males who also joined in to support their co-founders and partners. The participants were divided into groups where they worked for 3 days intensively to develop their startup ideas into a real business,” Roaa Ahmed adds.
“The ideas were diverse and had great potential. Some were in the fashion industry, some in the handcrafts, other focused on environmental causes, while some tackled educational problems through tech solutions. The participants also received direct training on topics such as social entrepreneurship, business modeling, marketing, sales and funding and they learned several skills such as team building, time management & networking.”
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