Harnessing Digital Finance for Women Entrepreneurs

Tesfaye Tadesse Lemma and Mthokozisi Mlilo

Working Papers from African Economic Research Consortium

Abstract: Women entrepreneurship plays a critical role in achieving sustainable development goals (SDG) of achieving gender equality and poverty reduction by promoting economic growth. The Kenya governments Vision 2030 identifies entrepreneurship as a key tool in eradicating poverty and creating wealth for its people. Policies aimed at improving women's entrepreneurship have had limited success, as women-owned businesses have struggled to survive and succeed compared to male- owned ones. This disparity in performance is attributed to finance-related obstacles. Digital financial services (DFS) and technology can promote financial inclusion and level the playing field for male and female entrepreneurs. According to the latest World Bank Enterprise survey, 53% of Kenyan women-owned businesses reported adopting DFS due to high transaction costs associated with traditional bank services, such as bank fees, time spent conducting banking activities, and the risk associated with cash movement. In Kenya, 36% of households are women-headed and in dual-headed households, women are likely to be the primary caregivers and endure most of the economic and social hardship. DFS can help alleviate social difficulties faced by women entrepreneurs while balancing work and home responsibilities.

Date: 2025
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent and nep-pay
Note: African Economic Research Consortium
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://publication.aercafricalibrary.org/handle/123456789/3942 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aer:wpaper:e0a219e2-be70-4582-b156-467cf5e22144

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from African Economic Research Consortium Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Daniel Njiru ().