A Professional Development Program for South African Women ICT Entrepreneurs

"Empowering Women Entrepreneurs in South Africa"

A Best Practice Highlighting the Power of Partnerships

Meridian International Center, the Maxum Business Incubator at The Innovation Hub in Pretoria, South Africa, and Multinational Development for Women in Technology (MDWIT™) are conducting a project entitled “Empowering Women Entrepreneurs in South Africa” designed to build the competence and confidence of 12 South African women who are aspiring or current entrepreneurs, thus enabling them to start or grow successful businesses. Each participant is associated with a South African incubator and has an information and communications technology (ICT) business/business model or an ICT-enabled business/business model.

The 12 participants were selected by Maxum to participate in a customized training and information-sharing program conducted in the Washington, DC and Baltimore, MD metropolitan area in April 2008. The participants were accompanied to the U.S. by a South African government official and the manager of a successful South African incubator and her colleague who met with U.S. counterparts to learn about best practices and challenges in developing policies, programs, services and resources to encourage and support entrepreneurship among women and minority groups. During the U.S. training program, a team of women technology entrepreneurs, identified by the partners, assisted the South Africans in the development of Business Action Plans and are continuing to provide virtual mentoring for the South African participants as they start or grow their businesses. In August, the team of U.S. women business specialists will travel to South Africa to conduct one-on-one site visits to provide mentoring and follow-ups to each entrepreneur and, in collaboration with program participants, will design and conduct three one-day workshops for a wider audience of women and minority entrepreneurs throughout South Africa. Additional sponsorship has been raised from the Small Enterprise Development Agency (SEDA) in South Africa to run the workshops, demonstrating the local support and buy-in to the program. During their time in South Africa, the U.S. delegation will also meet with the government representative and the incubator manager to assess progress towards developing new policies and programs for women entrepreneurs

In additional to the virtual mentorship from the U.S. team, the participants from the Gauteng province and northern part of South Africa are receiving mentorship via Maxum’s mentorship program and the participants from the Western Cape area are receiving mentorship via the Cape IT Initiative (CITI)’s My Business Group Programme. In order to provide further local support for the participants, and to develop a critical mass of business women who will assist each other, Maxum has identified prominent local business women and invited them to serve as role models and mentors for the participants. The intention is that this group of women will make available their experience and wisdom to the growing network of women ICT-based entrepreneurs.

An unexpected but very welcome outcome of the program was the creation of the “Femtrepreneurs”, a South African women’s entrepreneurship network developed to support women’s entrepreneurship and to give back to the younger generation by encouraging girls to become innovators and creators of their own business. Each participant has committed to take on at least one mentee as a first step in making a difference in their country.

In addition to developing 12 successful women entrepreneurs, it is expected that long-term relationships among and between U.S. and South African women who participated in the program, as well as on-going linkages between U.S. and South African companies and incubators, will be sustained as a result of this project.

After the end of the project period (24 months), the participants will continue to be supported by Maxum, and will be asked to submit annual project reports for two more years so that their progress can be followed, their success stories publicized and they can serve as role models for other South African women entrepreneurs.

In order to assess program outcomes, surveys and questionnaires will be completed at critical intervention points throughout the program (selection into the program, pre-and post-U.S. program, business start-up or growth, the U.S. team’s visit to South Africa and the end of the program) in order to assess program outcomes. Following the U.S. program, the participants were asked to complete a Post-U.S. Program Knowledge and Skills Questionnaire, which was then compared to the Pre-U.S. Program questionnaire to assess immediate program outcomes. When asked to assess the strength of their skills in the 26 subject areas covered during the training on a scale from 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent), the participants’ average ranking of their skills increased by 1 point (from 2.8 to 3.8) following the training program. Following the U.S. program, the women all felt more confident to start/grow their businesses. Likewise, they all felt more able to take advantage of the resources available for them to utilize in starting/growing their businesses and all felt that they had developed a greater network of support to turn to in starting/growing their business. Among the lessons that they would like to share upon return to South Africa, many of the women highlighted the idea that failure is okay and the importance of networking and mentorship

Click here to view a Sun Money article about the South African Women ICT Entrepreneurs.

For more information, email info@mdwit.org