Unleashing the economic potential: How female entrepreneurs can boost economic growth in emerging countries

“What do you think this is?” A female sales agent holds up a package with odd looking grains in it. “It looks like rice” the group responds. “That’s right, these are rice kernels that contain extra nutrients. When you boil them with your normal rice you will become healthier”. Together with around 35 ladies in a village in the rural parts of Northern Bangladesh, I am packed up in an iron sheet shack with posters for the windows to keep children from climbing in out of curiosity. Sitting with bare feet on a rug on the floor, we listen to the female sales agent explaining to us how to use this new nutritious product and how much it costs.

Looking at these women in their colourful dresses and hearing them talk about how to improve their own health and that of their children, I can’t help but think about C.K. Prahalad’s famous insight that we need to stop thinking of the poor, especially women, as victims or as a burden and start recognising them as resilient and creative entrepreneurs and value conscious consumers. Once we will do that a whole new world of opportunity will open up.

A strong argument for increasing emphasis on women entrepreneurship and women employment, is that women’s unpaid work accounts for 10 trillion USD. McKinsey Global Institute (2015) even states that if all countries empower women to their full economic potential, as much as 28 trillion USD, or 26 percent, could be added to global annual GDP. It is also known that women tend to invest more in their family’s well-being than men: an increase to a woman’s income of 10 USD achieves the same improvements in children’s nutrition and health as an increase to a man’s income of 110 USD (FAO, 2011).

At BoP Innovation Center, our belief is that women entrepreneurs can play a vital role in boosting economic productivity and growth in emerging economies if they are included as viable and trusted economic actors in agri-food value chains. Women are already present in every value chain as producers, processors and distributors. However, their roles are often informal and not recognized with limited power and voice or their roles are recognized but they have a hard time to access the resources needed to grow and professionalize their business.

To reap the benefits of women entrepreneurship, the constraints for female entrepreneurs should be uplifted and their potential should be unleashed. BoPInc does this through the design and implementation of four new delivery modules that target female entrepreneurs. These models range from inspiring the emergence of start-ups to accelerating and professionalising already existing female-led small and medium enterprises in the agro-food sector in emerging countries.

The sales agent that was selling the fortified rice kernels to the women in rural Bangladesh is part of a 320 female sales agent network that we set up as part of our incubator delivery module together with the other partners in the PROOFS program. The women were trained in basic management skills, record keeping and in nutrition. These 320 micro-entrepreneurs to date have reached 80.000 rural households in Bangladesh with behavioral change messaging on hygiene and nutrition and have sold around 800.000 USD worth of nutritious and hygiene products (click here for a video on the PROOFS program).

Working with female sales agents in rural Bangladesh was not always easy. Although many of the sales agents already had experience in working in their communities, convincing their families to start working as a sales agent was still a barrier for many of them. Sales agents told us: “My husband said I was not capable of doing it [becoming a sales agent].” and “My husband did not have confidence in me traveling alone because I had never crossed the river by myself”. Nonetheless, we have seen first waves in attitude changes among household members, particularly when the sales agents started contributing to the household income:

“Before being a sales agent, my mother in law used to scold me. My father’s house is close by and I would want to visit often. My mother in law didn’t like me leaving the house. Now being a sales agent she is happy that I go out to contribute some money and is not angry anymore when I visit my father’s house.”

“Normally my husband would only help me when I was sick or something bad happened. Now he takes care of me better”

Towards the end of the PROOFS program the majority of the sales agents reported that their husband and other family members were happy or even very happy with their work as a sales agent because of the money they bring in but also because of their contribution to the community. For more information on our lessons learned in the PROOFS program.

Another example of BoPInc’s female entrepreneurship strategy is the 2SCALE project. Focusing on inclusive agribusiness in 9 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, we developed a webinar to serve as a source of inspiration for women entrepreneurship in agribusiness in Africa. With real-life examples from female entrepreneurs involved in the 2SCALE program, we managed to inspire a large group of other women entrepreneurs to follow their pathway. For more information on how 2SCALE improves the every day lives of female entrepreneurs in agribusiness.

Through our approach, BoPInc tries to alter the way the world looks at the role of women in development. The result? In the meeting that I attended, the 35 Bangladeshi women only had one question after hearing the sales pitch of the female sales agent: "how many can I buy"?

Interested to learn more about BoPInc’s approach? Contact brouwer@bopinc.org.

This blog is a part of the September 2017 series on Empowering women, in partnership with SPRING.

Read the full series for insights on business models that empower girls and women, a new analysis of gender impacts of value chain interventions, tips on gender-lens investing and many inspiring personal stories from women.