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Women Entrepreneurship – an important vector of emancipation for women 

Mali
Entrepreneurial ecosystems
08.03.2022
One of FACEJ's major objectives is to accompany at least 40% of young women entrepreneurs in the creation or development of their business. 

The Support Fund for the Creation of Businesses by Young People (FACEJ), financed by the Embassy of Denmark and the Embassy of the Netherlands, is implemented by the consortium Swisscontact & Plan-BØRNEFONDEN.

The project aims to support 1,652 young people between the ages of 18 and 30 in the creation and/or development of their businesses in the regions of Bamako, Koulikoro, Sikasso, Ségou, Mopti, Timbuktu, and Kita.

One of FACEJ's major objectives is also to accompany at least 40% of young women entrepreneurs in the creation or development of their business. Although socio-cultural barriers can in many cases hinder young women's aspirations to create a formal business, the FACEJ team is proud to count 527 women-led businesses of the 1,375 businesses it has supported, or 38%.

These young women work in ALL sectors: agriculture/livestock, food processing, construction, services, fashion, cosmetics, environment and information and communication technologies. They remain predominant in the food processing, services, fashion, and cosmetics sectors.

Aichatoun Touré - head of the company "Codesign", specialized in digital 
Sakalé Troaré - head of the company "Mamali Moringa", specialized in the transformation of Moringa 

As of today, the FACEJ contributes to a better consideration of the obstacles faced by women through five modalities:

  1. All facilitators must include a strategy for identifying and accompanying young women.
  2. The use of facilitators specialized in supporting women entrepreneurs.
  3. The allocation of an “innovation bonus” for businesses led by women in a sector traditionally perceived as masculine.
  4. The relaxation of the age criterion for women when creating their business: 18 to 35 years old instead of 18 to 30 years old.
  5. The creation of a group of women “FACEJ ambassadors” as a platform for supporting and identifying young women in the regions outside of Bamako. The objective of this platform is to strengthen the skills and develop the resilience of young women to better face the challenges of entrepreneurship.

It is essential to highlight that female entrepreneurship remains an important vector of emancipation for young women. 

Through their activities and responsibilities as entrepreneurs, they create jobs and contribute to the national GDP, become financially independent, gain autonomy, can more easily provide for the family, and thus facilitate the education of children, gain self-confidence, and strengthen their decision-making power and agency.

The FACEJ team would like to take advantage of March 8 Day to salute all the efforts, courage, and tenacity of these young women! 

On this occasion, we met 2 young women who created their own business in sectors perceived as masculine (in French with English subtitles).

5 questions on female entrepreneurship in Mali
Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region in the world where women are more likely to be self-employed than men and where 27% of women start a business. We asked five experts in entrepreneurship to share their experiences of female entrepreneurship in Mali.
Watch the video
Mali
Entrepreneurial ecosystems
Support for Business Creation by Young People
Mali faces several major challenges related to youth employment. These are: (i) the rapid increase in the working-age population and the difficulties of finding jobs to young people, (ii) the important place taken by informal jobs, (iii) the low proportion of formal jobs in the private and public sectors, (iv) the low human capital accumulation,...
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