African women have the highest company creation rate in the world, a report published on September 27 by the strategy consulting firm Roland Berger reveals.  

Indeed, according to the report titled Women Entrepreneurship in Africa: a path to empowerment, 24 % of African women create their companies, a rate higher than that recorded in Latin America and the Carribean (17%), in North America (12%) as well as in Europe and Central Asia (8%).

Majority of these women create their companies to provide for their needs and their families’.

“Women embark on entrepreneurship because they cannot enter the job market (…) need to find a source of income to provide for themselves and for their families”, the report explains.

Roland Berger stresses that there is a great disparity in entrepreneurship in Sub Saharan Africa (26%) and North Africa (8%) due notably to socio-economic, cultural and religious factors.

The report further estimates that African women entrepreneurship contribution to the economy is substantial since between $150 billion and $200 billion of added value are created by these women. However, 39% of these entrepreneurs stop operation because their businesses are unprofitable while 5% stop operating for not having access to necessary funding for development. They, therefore, need better support.