In Kenya, as in other countries in the developing world, female entrepreneurship is associated with significant changes to societal norms; women becoming business owners, operating independently from their husbands and providing for their families (Kelley et al., 2011). One of the key challenges that entrepreneurs face is access to finance and female entrepreneurs are no different.
It is against this background that Strathmore University Business School and USAID’s Kenya Investment Mechanism partnered to offer the Women Investor Readiness Programme.
On International Women’s Day, we graduated 100 female entrepreneurs from the programme, with the participants graduating from the second and third cohorts.
In total, this Programme has trained a total of 150 women entrepreneurs throughout three cohorts with skills to help them get their businesses investor-ready. Further, it has helped them build consumer-driven value chains and gain the competitive advantage to exploit value-adding opportunities.
By Juliet Hinga
