The Role Of Women In Entrepreneurship Development Of Rwanda
Rwanda is a country that is still recovering from the 1994 genocide, but women movement in various sectors especially in politics and in business has played an important role in helping in recovery of this country’s economy and in development. Women make up 56% of MPs in the Rwandan parliament; life is changing quickly for women, what is going on for women in Rwanda are part of the revolutionary process.
Women possess the absolute most critical government positions in ministries and make up half of the nation's parliamentarians, including the speaker. Rwandan women are assuming a key job in various sectors, for example, government institutions, courts and the judicial system, economy, farming, and education sectors among others (Amer, 2013). Generally, women' support in political issues and basic leadership in Rwanda has been immaterial, particularly at the higher levels. This is nonetheless endeavors amid the pre-provincial period where women in Rwanda assumed a vital job in the nation's administration through the foundation of the ruler mother. After the damaging destruction of 1994, there was an awesome need to assemble and help the population in recreating their lives and in addition their networks and the nation in general. Rwandese women in various authority positions assumed basic jobs in preparing individual women to live respectively and to discover basic answers for their very own issues and those of their nation (World Bank, 2016).
Over the most recent 11 years various women have shown themselves to be classic leaders at the community level and in addition the country level. The insignificant nearness of women in bureau, parliament, the legal, and all circles of life filled in as good examples and furthermore created certainty among other women. This opened up potential outcomes for expanding women' job in basic leadership. According to Ramoglou (2016) entrepreneurship is the process of developing, starting and managing a business together with the risks involved with it in order to make profit. There are so many risks involved in starting a new business such as lack of finances, changing business environment, lack of market and services demand, and bad business decisions among many others, however an entrepreneur should have the ability to recognize some of these challenges and come up with solutions that will ensure the business continues to remain productive and successful (Drucker, 2003).
Entrepreneurship has been recognized as one of the most important driver of economic growth and social development across the world. This pragmatic advancement in the economy is brought about by entrepreneurs who identifies an opportunity and takes the risk to exploit the opportunity which brings productivity, innovation and creates employment. Over the years there have been women entrepreneurs who have come up and are gaining intensity, in the world today women and female business entrepreneurs owns more than 25 % of the businesses (Govindappa, 2009).
In countries like USA Mishra (2010) on his study identified that one out of four businesses in the US are owned by a woman, the same case applied to countries like Canada, Australia and some parts of Asia. His findings also reported that new businesses that are currently coming up in these countries are being set up by women. In Africa business owned by women are rapidly coming up in countries like Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, Burundi and Rwanda respectively. For example more than 80 % of the foods produced in Subsaharan Africa are done by women (ILO, 2006). It is estimated that in the developed countries women own and manage one third of the small businesses (Singh, 2009). In the past the global outlook of female entrepreneurs was not that encouraging but today women businesses as well as those active in businesses have shown a steady growth and are contributing a lot to the economic development through poverty reduction and job creation (Thakur, 2009).
According to Yeshiareg (2017), in the last three years, promotion of women’s economic and political empowerment has gained a lot of attention across the globe, in Africa discussions have been raised on the role of the women entrepreneurship in bring development because majority of African countries have been faced by poverty, underdevelopment, low food production, inflation and the rapid growth of the population (Quachey 2009). However The World Bank Enterprise surveys of 2012-2016 revealed that women entrepreneurs are able to contribute to economic growth particularly from the sectors of agriculture and textile, however what they lack is the access to capital and in some countries the women marginalization has been very high and their contribution to different sectors has not been recognized. But Rwanda has been one of the African countries that have promoted the issue gender equality (Balhara & Singh, 2015). After the Rwandan genocide of 1994, the government realized that the only hope to the country’s economic development was empowering women by reforming the political and legislative arena; the government set priorities and gave the women rights to start businesses with low taxation of the business licences. According to the World Bank report of 2018, 42 % of the enterprises and business operating in Rwanda are owned by women, they also consist of 58 % of the informal sector, this accounts to 30 % of the overall GDP.
These businesses have been very significant in improving the country’s economy by carrying out these business activities in different sectors, in the retail sector the business accounts is 82 %, in the services sector it’s at 17 % and in the manufacturing it’s at 2 %, other women have also invested in information and communications technology sectors (IFC 2008). In the private sector 26. 3 % of the Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are owned by women, in the overall 43. 2 % are female managers. Nevertheless doing any business has never been easy, there are several challenges that comes along with it, and in general Rwanda women entrepreneurs have been faced with the challenges of raising capital, lack of human capital, infrastructural challenges, access to the international markets, networking and insufficient institutions (Cutura 2008).
