Women Entrepreneurship in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Challenge of Financing—An Exploratory Study in Togo
摘要
In developing countries in general, and the development of women’s entrepreneurship is the subject of much debate in both academic and professional circles. Women entrepreneurs face a number of difficulties in accessing finance when they want to set up and/or acquire their own business (Abousaid & Hilali, 2023; Wane, 2009). Numerous studies (Benarousse et al., 2020; Dujin, report from Roland Berger Consulting and WIA Philanthropy, 2019; World Bank Report, 2020) have shown that it is more difficult for women entrepreneurs to obtain financing than their male counterparts. In Sub-Saharan Africa in particular, studies by Nwosu and Orji (2017) in Nigeria and Akouwerabou (2020) in Burkina Faso show that African women entrepreneurs experience difficulties in accessing finance. Similarly, Togolese women entrepreneurs are also particularly confronted with this problem of access to finance (Yarbonme, 2023). We develop this in two steps. In a first section, we conduct a review of literature on the specificity of women entrepreneurship in Sub-Saharan Africa, focusing on the Constraints and challenges related to financing women entrepreneurs. In conclusion of this section, we then propose a general model of women entrepreneurs financing. We have conducted two empirical studies. One is presented in this chapter in Sect. 2. It is a rather exploratory study of the general model, on women entrepreneurs in Togo, based on a qualitative inquiry among a panel of women entrepreneurs and of officers of financial institutions in the area of Lomé in Togo. The second study is a quantitative test of some elements of the model (level of education and influence of stable recourse to sources of financing) on the case of women entrepreneurs in Chad. It is presented in the following chapter.