Thank you very much for giving AFAEMME (The federation of Businesswomen organizations this opportunity to share our knowledge in this panel about women entrepreneurs)
Our experiences and my shares will come from Mediterranean countries especially from North Africa and Middle East
Female labour force participation, which in MENA countries is currently the lowest worldwide: 21% on average compared to 51% for OECD countries according to World Bank data.
Women own and manage their business in MENA region compared to 31-38% worldwide
AFAEMME PROGRAMME LABELED BY THE UNION FOR THE MEDITERRANEAN ,IS A VERY GOOD BEST PRACTICE FOR PROMOTING AND SUPPORTING WOMEN ENTREPRENEURS
The Young Women as Job Creators project provided talented women finishing their university studies with assistance to become successful businesswomen.
The project was officially launched in Barcelona, following the endorsement of the 43 Member States of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM).
Young Women as Job Creators promoted self-employment and entrepreneurship among university students who were about to graduate in Jordan, Morocco, Palestine and Spain, and who had an interest in starting their own business. The project was based around Women’s Entrepreneurship Days (WEDs), a series of seminars which taught participants how to create a business.
The project trained about 800 young women from 32 participating universities to become future successful business women and employers.
The Association of Organisations of Mediterranean Businesswomen (AFAEMME) and the Union for the Mediterranean signed a Global Project Memorandum in order to replicate the project in other Euro-Mediterranean countries. The overall aim was to further promote female entrepreneurship and contribute to the development of sustainable economies based on private initiatives, quality education and gender equality. AFAEMME implemented the second phase of the project in Albania, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Palestine and Tunisia.
A total of 32 universities in Morocco, Jordan, Palestine and Spain were involved. Some 800 young women benefitted directly from the project’s specific advice on how to become successful entrepreneurs.
The best business idea, submitted by a young Jordanian student, was recognised with the UfM AFAEMME Young Women as Job Creators Prize, which was presented during the Women’s Socio-Economic Empowerment: Projects for Progress conference, held at the UfM headquarters.
During Phase II, in addition to the Women’s Entrepreneurship Days, national businesswomen’s associations from the seven participating countries provided training sessions in management, marketing and finance. They also offered mentoring programmes to help young female entrepreneurs achieve the goal of starting their own business projects.
BEST PRACTICES
There are several programmes and Initiatives, proposals and projects in Euromed countries for women entrepreneurs with the perspective to encourage innovation, digitalization and sustainability.
The development of digital entrepreneurship is increasingly touted as part of the solution to female and youth unemployment in the Euro-Mediterranean region. In countries such as Lebanon, Egypt or Morocco, digital start-ups are already proliferating along with business incubators.
The establishment of digital clusters would be beneficial to sustain the success of these digital start-ups. That said, the potential of entrepreneurship remains largely untapped in the region, as attested by rates of business creation well below the world average (4.7 per 1 000 people in 2017) in countries such as Jordan (0.6), Morocco (1.6) or Tunisia (1.7), according to World Bank data.
SUPPORTING WOMEN ENTREPRENERUSHIP IN VULNERABLE STATES
How to support women’s entrepreneurship: In order to boost women’s entrepreneurship, which could provide more flexible and more adaptable jobs for women, to reduce the constraints on women entrepreneurs and foster their integration into business networks by:
• Developing loan guarantee schemes, guarantee funds to address the problem of lack of guarantees, especially for women without assets. This will facilitate their access to finance;
• Promoting investment funds and « private equity finance », participative finance dedicated to women, to address the problem of lack of equity and guarantees with an accompanying educative approach, and assistance in start-up and project management.
• Supporting the development of micro finance adapted to micro-enterprises, and dedicated to female initiatives, by lowering the cost of micro-credits and adopting a local monitoring and proximity approach.
Mª Helena de Felipe 