Africa's businesswomen - Underfunded or underperforming?

Charles Ackah, Holger Görg, Aoife Hanley and Cecília Hornok

No 2242, Kiel Working Papers from Kiel Institute for the World Economy

Abstract: While the recent success of Africa's 'Lionesses' - successful female entrepreneurs - is internationally celebrated, less is known about how liquidity can fuel the success of the 'Lionesses' and other businesswomen. Using information from a panel of over 800 male- and female-owned businesses in Ghana (ISSER-IGC survey), we capture a measure of underfunding, in addition to data on supplier credit, equity and other finance sources. Our regressions reveal a female-to-male productivity gap of between -11 to -19 percent, values similar to estimates for other African countries. However, when the relationship between gender and productivity is mediated by financial constraints, the gender performance gap disappears. Accordingly, female business-owners who indicate that funding is not a problem, are associated with higher productivity than males, all things equal. In a finding new to the literature, our regressions reveal the importance of supplier credit for Africa's businesswomen.

Keywords: female-owned businesses; liquidity; productivity; supplier credit; Africa; Ghana (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D22 J16 L26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr and nep-int
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Related works:
Journal Article: Africa’s businesswomen – underfunded or underperforming? (2024)
Working Paper: Africa's businesswomen – underfunded or underperforming? (2023)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:ifwkwp:2242

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