Closing the Gap: Empowering Women Entrepreneurs in a Digital World

For Kulaisi Matiki, few things are as important in life as her independence. “I have never seen myself working for someone else,” she explains. That entrepreneurial grit helped her start several businesses in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi. In a single day, you might find her helping a customer choose between two glossy bundles of hair extensions, demonstrating the different brooms she has for sale to another, haggling with a third over the price of her nhkwani – pumpkin leaves – and expertly braiding the hair of a fourth. But despite Kulaisi’s obvious business savvy, in the past she has sometimes struggled to make ends meet, and she wasn’t always sure why. 

Like many African women, Kulaisi sat on the wrong side of the digital divide – the widening gap between those who have access to the technological devices and skills powering our globalized world, and those who do not. Although women make up more than half of all small business owners in Africa – the highest proportion of any region in the world – their businesses tend to remain smaller and less profitable than those of their male counterparts. Kulaisi, for instance, had never used a computer. In fact, she confesses, “I had never used any digital tools.” The reasons this divide exists are complex. Sometimes it’s a matter of access. In other cases, it’s about stereotypes, stigma, and plain old sexism. But with the right tools, confidence, and support systems, women like Kulaisi can hurtle themselves to the other side of the chasm. And when enough of them do, the gap itself gets smaller. 

That is why Digital Opportunity Trust and the Mastercard Foundation have made gender an essential focus of their Going Beyond project, a five-year initiative to provide digital business training to 300,000 young entrepreneurs in Côte d’Ivoire, Malawi, Zambia, and Tanzania. In total, 70% of them will be women. The training they complete will equip them not only with the “hard” skills to manage and market their businesses better, but also the “soft” skills to move confidently through spaces they never felt were theirs. “When women succeed in business, it goes against the bylaws of our society,” says Venance Dulle from Tanzania, a member of Going Beyond’s first cohort of Youth Leaders, who run the digital business trainings for their peers. 

Going Beyond’s commitment to young women also extends beyond just training them. In fact, young women and local organizations that served them helped co-design the project itself, offering the critical expertise of their own experience. For instance, as a result of this process, some training sites began offering childcare, having received the feedback that many women would be unable to participate without it. Meanwhile, DOT and its partner organizations in each country worked to make sure every person involved with Going Beyond – not only the women – understood why gender equality was fundamental to a better future for their communities. “From the side of men, we got to open our minds,” says Murshid Kinje, a Youth Leader in Tanzania.

As for Kulaisi, she says her training has already helped her immensely. She has learned to keep detailed financial records, how to apply for loans, and how to connect with new markets online. Finding Going Beyond, she says, was “a stroke of luck and grace.” But it shouldn’t take luck to succeed as a young African businesswoman. Going Beyond is working towards a future where it will be entirely ordinary.