The contribution of women microenterprises to poverty alleviation in urban Sudan

In this context, there is a need to assess the effectiveness of microenterprises in improving the socioeconomic conditions of women entrepreneurs and in alleviating poverty.Accordingly, the thrust of the study lies in identifying the effect of women microenterpriseson poverty alleviation in urban Sudan, taking the Khartoum state as a case. The study’s focus is on women with microenterprises or engaged in trading, production, and selling in the informal sector. Hence, the population of the study is the 104 thousand of the self-employed females in KS.350 respondents are selected and random sampling technique is applied considering location of project (market-based, home-based, and street sellers), locality (all KS localities, namely Omdorman, Karrari, Ombada, Khartoum, Jabalawlia, Bahri, Shargalneel) and type of activity (20 different activities are covered). Primary data are collected using a structured questionnaire and individual interviews held with female entrepreneurs in KS as well as by optical observation by visiting the respondents in their locations. Collected data include (1) socioeconomic characteristics including age, marital status, education, family size and housing and place of residence; (2) project related data covering projecttype, activityandlocation; (3) entrepreneurial motivations, opinions, attitudes, perceptions and viewpoints; (4) information on familyincomeand assetsbeforeand after the establishment of the project; (5) sources of funding; (6) marketing, competition and overall performance; and (7) problems and constrains. Secondary data are gathered from various sources including national surveys, censuses and previous studies. Both primary and secondary data are analysed using descriptive statistics and cross tabulation imbedded in the advanced data analysis module of Microsoft Excel. Major findings of the study show that the implemented poverty alleviations plans have contributed to alleviate poverty in the study area, but poverty still widespread. Despite the significant role of the government plans, the average performance remained minor and limited. The study results show that poverty has a woman’s face as there are more women than men who suffer from abject poverty in urban Sudan. It is also revealed that, women’s microenterprises are important elements for an effective poverty reduction strategy, as many respondents confirmed that their business is the only source of family income, which support the assumption that women’ projects is a solution for many families to move out of poverty. This is confirmed as well by the findings that 67% of the women entrepreneurs consumed the income they gained from their projects on daily basic needs, mainly food for the family, especially for women-headed household.Female entrepreneurs' age, marital status and education and family size are all found to be influential factors for their entry into business and in general the culture of self-employment is getting widely accepted with lesser rush to be employed by the public sector. This being reported, female entrepreneurs have also identified several constrains and challenges such as the limited access to finance, difficulties in the marketing of their products, the complex administrative procedures and the government’s fees and taxes.