Angola leads rise of women entrepreneurs on continent

WOMEN entrepreneurs have become more common in developing countries such as Angola, according to a study carried out in 43 countries by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM).

The study found that the highest levels of women entrepreneurship were in Africa and the Middle East.

“Just over half of adult women in Angola, and more than a third in Togo, were starting or running a new business, along with over one in five women in each of the Latin American economies and Burkina Faso and Kazakhstan,” the report read.

“The ratio of female to male entrepreneurship measures the relative gender gap. In 2020, there are six economies in which the level of female entrepreneurship exceeds the male rate: all from Central and East Asia or Middle East and Africa.”

According to the study, the lowest ratio of women-to-men entrepreneurship was found in Italy, India and Egypt.

“Each of these has approximately three men starting or running a new enterprise for every woman doing the same. In these economies, low participation by women drags down the overall levels of entrepreneurship,” the study found.

“Increasing female participation in entrepreneurship could create thousands of new businesses, adding significantly to jobs and incomes.”

The study found that women entrepreneurs were also common in developed countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, America, Chile and Panama. The study showed that some developed nations in Europe had low rates of women entrepreneurs.

The GEM 2020/21 Global Report findings are based on interviews with nearly 140000 people from 43 economies and spells out how levels of entrepreneurial motivation and activity vary across the globe.

A key GEM measure was the level of Total Early-stage Entrepreneurial Activity (TEA), which measures the percentage of adults aged between 18 and 64 actively engaged in starting or running a new business.

According to the study, the highest and most variable levels of TEA are in Africa and the

Middle East.

“Almost half of adults in Angola are starting or running a new business, compared to less than one in 10 adults in Morocco, Iran and Israel,” the study read.

“Interestingly, the lowest levels of early-stage entrepreneurial activity are in Europe and North America, with 14 out of 20 economies having less than one in 10 adults starting or running a new business.”

According to the study, the most consistently high levels of

TEA entrepreneurship were in the Latin America and Caribbean global region.

Egyptian entrepreneurs aged between 18 and 24 were part of the nine participating economies most likely to start or to run a new business.

“In a majority of the 43 economies, the propensity to start or run a new business increases with age and then declines.”

GEM analysis said that new businesses were more likely to be started by men rather than women, adding that because the data was collected before August 2020, the full impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on women entrepreneurs may not yet be fully reflected.

With the Covid-19 pandemic, the study found that half or more of the TEA entrepreneurs in Africa, Central and East Asia, Latin America and Middle East economies said it was more difficult to start a business in 2021 compared to a year ago.