In the December of 2016, the Graça Machel Trust birthed its first 100 high growth entrepreneur graduates in the Women Creating Wealth (WCW) programme in Malawi, Tanzania, and Zambia. This number scaled to 300 in 2018 and as of 2021 we now have 430 graduates and alumni. This Pan-African initiative has significantly grown businesses and positively impacted women entrepreneurs’ attitudes, behaviours, skills, and confidence. In 2017, the Trust published and launched its first book – Women Creating Wealth, at the Women Advancing Africa conference in Tanzania. This is a collection of inspiring stories of 60 women entrepreneurs from across Africa and in various sectors, ranging from small to large businesses. It showcases diverse profiles of women entrepreneurs who are growing their enterprises and sharing lessons for other female entrepreneurs to do the same.
In 2016 we were honored to have partnered with, Virgin Unite and are extremely grateful for their continuation and pivoting to a digital blended learning offering during 2020 and 2021. It is encouraging to see that the work continues.
We have consolidated the best of the programme’s lessons and foundational elements since 2016. These are centred around the challenges we want to help women entrepreneurs solve, so that they may go on to improve business performance, confidence and leadership. We aim to aid in the strengthening of key entrepreneurial competencies, setting up business and compliance systems to scale and build capacity to access markets and finance. The digitized and intensive 16 weeks Ignite course is coupled with a 6-month implementation master and peer coaching support, to encourage the application of learning for growth. Being online based, the programme is flexible, self-paced and can accommodate the needs of women entrepreneurs and their domestic responsibilities and burdens.
Introducing the Women Creating Wealth Business Community
The WCW Business Community is a post-WCW graduation 3-year support intervention to help increase the performance of alumni in their growth journey and make the WCW dream a reality. There are three key elements to the business community:
- Connect and inspire a network and inspiration platform to increase the connection of entrepreneurs in countries across the region in the WCW Alumni countries of Tanzania, South Africa, Zambia, and Malawi.
- Facilitating access to market.
- Facilitating access to finance.
South Africa kicked off the Connect and Inspire sessions and holds monthly events. It also kicked off the first regional Connect and Inspire session in order to connect the alumni from 2016. On the 3rd of September Tanzania has followed suit and held the second regional event. Malawi will host the third one for the year on the 26th of November 2021. The session’s participants include WCW Alumni from the four countries – Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, and South Africa, facilitated by representative Connect and Inspire champions. We will be opening up invitations to the entrepreneurs’ community in order to extend the networking opportunities of other entrepreneurs. The business community events are hosted through the funding support of Australian entrepreneur – Tamara Campbell, who aligns with the aspirations of WCW. Tamara was introduced to GMT by Virgin Unite in 2020.
The highlights of the regional Connect & inspire sessions held by Tanzania on 3 September 2021.
The event theme was Covid-19 survival strategies which sought to discover how the entrepreneurs were able to navigate through Covid-19. And sought to investigate what strategies were used to survive in business especially through the utilization of the knowledge they acquired, during their WCW program. This event provided an auspicious platform, whereby entrepreneurs were able to share their experiences, as well as voice the challenges and opportunities they gained from taking on the different strategies.
Gloria Lema – a WCW Master Coach, kicked off the session by going through the evolution of the WCW programme since its launch in 2016. Additionally, Aika Makindara – Chairperson of the WCW Tanzania, gave a brief regarding the Tanzanian context of WCW, the expectations of having a meet and greet – a local connecting and inspiring session and peer coaching session, before the end of the year.
“Our duty as alumni is to inspire others and make sure we do not leave other women behind, the knowledge and experience we have to walk hand in hand as we are crucial parts of our countries’ economies.”
Beatrice Kajiru runs JB Holdings Company Ltd in Tanzania, she says “We have learnt a lot. I have been able to use these two competencies to completely change my business: information seeking, seeking information from clients, suppliers, and competitors and seeking advice from experts for business and technical advice. Systematic planning, Monitoring and evaluation has also helped. I’m now able to plan by setting objectives, and with strong Monitoring and evaluation, I’m able to determine profitability and future planning.”
“We lost 50% of our revenues. We cut costs by retrenching staff, decreasing salaries by 30%, and implementing commissions on all projects. We also had to change the condition of loan repayment from 2 to 5 years to reduce monthly instalment and chances of defaulting”
Nthabiseng Serite runs SERITE Engineering in South Africa, she says “What stood out for me in the session was the E-myth. It served as a business mover in everything I’m doing and whether it aligns and takes me where I wanted to go. I started writing my strategies all over again, and it was like starting the business fresh. It was complete revamp of how I will do my business. Since then, I have been intentional in the decisions I’m making in business.”
“We wanted to maximise the use of our resources, so we focused on our core services which helped us reduce the add-ons and accessories, using different payment plans on various services provided support and back up to our current customers.”
Caroline Gachara Gul runs R & R Associates, a public relations and event Management company in Tanzania, she says “It was the start of me doing business professionally. And among the biggest lessons for me was evaluating my finances and making decisions in my business based on finances, performances and planning.”
“We had segmented our business, and we had invested heavily just before the pandemic, and we were invested in international meetings which were not happening. Communication with clients and supplier for cancellations to try and avoid losses that would have prevented downsizing by 70%, layoffs, running costs and discounts that were offered to some of our clients.”
Victoria Mwafulirwa is the founder of Home Industries Limited in Malawi, she says “WCW brought tenacity, confidence and clarity as I came in having an idea. I learnt to be strong, focused and never to give up. WCW has given me the opportunity, platform and support to implement, develop and grow the idea to where it is now. in addition, I’m able to speak in public, articulate and encourage and accept challenges.
“Networking and collaborations maintained and retained the clients that we already had. We were able to extend credit Facilities and compromised engagements with farmers on the new way of doing business.”
Aretha Miyoba runs Aremi Investments and Aremi Agencies in Zambia, she says “My Biggest lesson was persistence. It has been that thing that has kept me in business. Every stumbling block was an opportunity to do other things. As a result, I have been able to open 3 other businesses. Risk-taking has been one of the lessons that I do not put all eggs in one basket. Networking and persuasion have brought new business and partners on board”
“Our business dropped by 70%. We had to negotiate with our tenant at the mall for rent to be paid in local currency and negotiated payment plans. We also had to close some shops and move into cheaper shops. We invested in more mobile phones to call and do online banking transactions with existing clients, and advertised on social media, changed closing times.”
A second edition of WCW e-book is underway and will be released first quarter of 2022. Read stories in the 2017 e-book below. If you have any rich and inspiring entrepreneurship lessons to share, send an email to wcwinfo@gracamacheltrust.org. A call for application for the 2022 Women Creating Wealth e-book will be shared soon.
A FREE COPY of A Collection of Stories of Female Entrepreneurs from Africa can be downloaded here.
Women Creating Wealth: A Collection of Stories of Female Entrepreneurs from Africa
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