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Africa's businesswomen - Underfunded or underperforming?

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  • Ackah, Charles
  • Görg, Holger
  • Hanley, Aoife
  • Hornok, Cecília

Abstract

While the recent success of Africa's 'Lionesses' - successful female entrepreneurs - is internationally celebrated, less is known about how liquidity can fuel the success of the 'Lionesses' and other businesswomen. Using information from a panel of over 800 male- and female-owned businesses in Ghana (ISSER-IGC survey), we capture a measure of underfunding, in addition to data on supplier credit, equity and other finance sources. Our regressions reveal a female-to-male productivity gap of between -11 to -19 percent, values similar to estimates for other African countries. However, when the relationship between gender and productivity is mediated by financial constraints, the gender performance gap disappears. Accordingly, female business-owners who indicate that funding is not a problem, are associated with higher productivity than males, all things equal. In a finding new to the literature, our regressions reveal the importance of supplier credit for Africa's businesswomen.

Suggested Citation

  • Ackah, Charles & Görg, Holger & Hanley, Aoife & Hornok, Cecília, 2023. "Africa's businesswomen - Underfunded or underperforming?," Kiel Working Papers 2242, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:ifwkwp:2242
    as

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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    female-owned businesses; liquidity; productivity; supplier credit; Africa; Ghana;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D22 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Empirical Analysis
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • L26 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Entrepreneurship

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