Women entrepreneurs discuss how to grow businesses
The entrepreneurial environment in Ghana is vibrant and growing but a few challenges do exist. Gender discrimination, lack of access, balancing business and family and lack of self-promotional skills are just some of the challenges women entrepreneurs face in sub-Saharan Africa.
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The tide is, however, changing with lots of women venturing into entrepreneurship to manage, nurture and grow their businesses, despite the challenges they face.
To overcome these hindrances and strive to the top, a platform to assist women entrepreneurs has been established by Alldens Lane, a business coaching and mentoring firm.
Known as the “the Women Chief Executive Officer (WCEO) Academy”, the initiative, through a series of inspiring programmes and projects, prepares professional WCEOs for extraordinary business success and leadership.
One of such programmes, dubbed the ‘Evening With’, was held in Accra last Saturday. The Founder and President of the Ashesi University College, Mr Patrick Awuah, was present to interact with some women chief executives, entrepreneurs and successful business leaders, amid dining, business conversation and collective discussions.
Women as powerhouse
In an interview during the 5th edition of the programme in Accra last Saturday, the founder of Alldens Lane, Ms Ruka Sanusi, said women’s potential as an economic powerhouse was huge.
Women had demonstrated that they were a formidable economic force, she said, adding that sometimes coping with work and family as a business leader and mentor, were the demonstration of amazing skills possessed by women.
According to her, most African women, including Ghanaian women, are with so much passion and with lots of zeal to engage in business activities, and what they need are business directions to push them forward.
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Therefore, she said the WCEO Academy was aimed at empowering the next generation of great female business leaders, by giving them access to opportunities to learn and grow through professional coaching and mentoring.
With programmes such as the ‘Evening With’, where prominent entrepreneurs, CEOs, among other successful business leaders, are invited to share their experiences with upcoming female CEOs and entrepreneurs, she said she sought to drive the transformational development of the women in business.
Sharing the experiences
With several years of experiences as business management adviser on multiple international and national projects, Ms Sanusi said she believed her experiences had given her broad perspective that would support other women to also succeed in their area of work.
“We want to provide an informal yet instructive means for WCEOs to meaningfully discover the path to extraordinary business success, while they network and make connections with like-minded WCEOs,” she explained.
She further indicated that the academy leveraged the strength and breadth of the Alldens Lane’s brand and network to provide professional WCEOs with amazing business adventures and lessons.
Therefore, she said about eight women entrepreneurs were expected to travel to South Africa in the next few weeks to meet with some successful and prominent South African entrepreneurs to learn from them.
She advised young women who had started their own business or wanted to start their own business to get mentors and support from experienced people to assist and guide them.
Mr Patrick Awuah
In his interaction with the participants, Mr Awuah advised entrepreneurs to build strong business relationships based on trust, honesty and authenticity.
Sharing his own experience on how fear gripped him when he wanted to start the Ashesi University College, Mr Awuah said it was always best to embrace your fear and walk through it.