Financing women’s entrepreneurship in Sub-Saharan Africa: bank, microfinance and mobile money

ABSTRACT

Faced with an increasingly high unemployment rate in Sub-Saharan Africa, setting up new businesses is more than ever a necessity. Women who try to work in this direction, however, face several difficulties, one of which is obtaining funding. This is why this study aims to determine the role played by banks, microfinance institutions and mobile money in the financing of female entrepreneurship in Sub-Saharan Africa. To do this, it mobilizes data ranging from 2004 to 2018 on 44 countries in the region. The use of the generalized method of moments (GMM) reveals women’s access to banking services in sub-Saharan Africa does not have a significant effect on their self-employment. On the other hand, it appears that microfinance services and mobile money are significant alternatives for financing this self-employment in the region. In addition, this study highlighted the push hypothesis of entrepreneurship. The results show that women turn to entrepreneurship because they have difficulty in obtaining paid employment.

KEYWORDS:

• Bank
• entrepreneurship
• gender
• microfinance
• mobile money

Acknowledgments

We thank the referees and editors for some very helpful comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jean Francky Landry Ngono

Jean Francky Landry NGONO Phd Student at the University of Ngaoundere.