Visa is expanding its global She’s Next initiative to help women entrepreneurs.
The initiative comprises a series of programmes giving women entrepreneurs access to insights via research and engagement with small businesses, private and public sector communities, and educational resources. She’s Next will also bring networking opportunities in partnership with She Leads Africa; a community of over 700,000 women entrepreneurs and financial support and solutions to enable the digital capability.
Visa has unveiled new research entitled: Understanding women-owned SMEs, which explores the role of technologies, including digital payments in enabling the business success of female entrepreneurs in South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria.
The research highlights the top business challenges experienced by women entrepreneurs in South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria, the impact of COVID-19 on these businesses, and how digital payments have accelerated business growth in over 80 percent of the businesses surveyed.
“According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest percentage of women entrepreneurs in the world, with 26 percent starting and managing a business on the continent in the last year. We aim to encourage and enable even more participation of women in driving the economy, through our She’s Next initiative,” says Aida Diarra, Senior Vice President & Head of Sub-Saharan Africa at Visa.
Our research shows that female-led businesses face unique challenges throughout their entrepreneurial journey, and we are committed to helping these business owners across Africa to identify opportunities for growth.”
As one of the largest electronic payment networks in the world, Visa provides products, services and programmes that go beyond payment tools to deliver the value of Visa’s network by helping small businesses to be more competitive today and in the future. Visa believes that economies that include everyone, uplift people and it focuses daily on enabling access to digital commerce for both buyers and sellers. For small businesses, Visa is taking steps to address the access gap and be a payments network that truly works for everyone.
So far, Visa has digitally enabled 16 million small and micro businesses (SMBs) worldwide, over 30 percent of the multi-year goal it set last year to digitize 50 million small and micro businesses (SMBs). The Visa Foundation also announced $3.5million funding to organizations across Sub-Saharan Africa that support SMBs.
This funding includes grants and impact investments to programmes that provide SMBs with training, support services, and access to capital, with a gender-inclusive and diverse lens.
Source : https://thenationonlineng.net/opening-funding-opportunities-for-women-led-businesses/