Growing Economies Through Gender Parity
Closing the gender gap in the workforce could add a staggering $229 billion to Nigeria’s GDP growth.
NDESWOMEN
About NDESWomen
Our recently conducted research indicates that female entrepreneurs have a higher rate of success than their male counterparts, however, there is a big gender gap in the scalable startup entrepreneurship space, which portends detrimental impact on the country’s GDP. Women need to be more involved in the economy, evidence based studies has shown that increased participation of women in the economy will increase GDP per capita, and thus the overall level of wealth of a country.
It is critical to our economic survival as a nation. Various benefits have been highlighted by scholars on the inclusion of women and women-owned businesses. Examples include, increasing the economic chances of the next generation, access to a large pool of unused human capital critical to stimulating job creation; growth and innovation (The International Trade Center, 2017).
How then do we solve this problem?
For us to increase the participation of women in the entrepreneurial space and economic activity as a whole, it is highly important that we identify and improve the conditions for the start-up, maintenance and sustainable growth of women-owned businesses. This is what NDESWomen is about.
NDESWomen is an initiative of the Nigeria Digital Economy Summit (NDES) that seeks to include more women in the tech ecosystem. It is a known fact that increased access to finance is an important facilitating factor in the success of women owned businesses. Hence, NDESWomen seeks to equip women with the training and finance needed to disrupt the different sectors in the economy and leverage the digital economy properly.
Accelerator Program
In a bid to advance the inclusion of Nigerian female founders, NDESWOMEN in collaboration with Foresight Seeds Fund has launched its Accelerator Program (AP) to be kickstarted with a competition to select 3 Nigerian women with the most thought-provoking ideas and practical tech-driven innovations. The three winners to be selected by an independent panel of judges, will be recipients of early-stage funding, coaching and mentoring support to bring these innovative ideas to full implementation.
This is an initiative to encourage more female participation in the Nigerian Tech Ecosystem. A gender balanced economy is more likely to thrive as reported by McKinsey Global Institute showing the numerous benefits from increased participation of women in economic activity. The competition will launch as part of the NDES event, with a social media campaign to raise awareness, and ensure nation-wide participation.
Applicants will be directed to complete an application form on the NDES website. A selection of industry experts will scrutinise all applications and sort the applicants based on the best business pitch strategies. These finalists will be put through a series of competitions to weigh their technical abilities, soft skills and more, to determine the best amongst them in order of performance. The judges will then rate the finalists according to how effective their business case from which the top 3 will be selected.
The Accelerator Program for ‘Purpose-Driven Female Startup Founders’ will be launched on the summit day —typically at the start of the final quarter of the year— with the competition running for 3 months and the finalists will begin the cohort in January.