Empowering Rural Women Entrepreneurs: The contribution of Informal Support Structures to Enterprise Performance in Côte d’Ivoire

In many developing economies, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, formal entrepreneurial support systems remain scarce or inaccessible to women entrepreneurs. Consequently, these women rely on informal family, professional, community and financial networks to mitigate economic and organizational constraints. This study investigates the influence of informal support structures (ISS) on the performance of micro and small enterprises (MSEs) owned by women in rural Côte d’Ivoire. Adopting a hypothetico-deductive framework grounded in adapted positivism, the research employed mixed-methods design combining semi-structured interviews and a quantitative survey of 371 rural women entrepreneurs. Both qualitative and quantitative analyses confirm that informal mechanisms, particularly family networks, professional relationship, rotating savings groups (tontines) and Village Savings and credit associations (VSCAs), exert a positive and statistically significant effect on enterprise performance. The study further reveals that these informal structures contribute not only to economic performance (growth, profitability, reinvestment) but also to personal performance, expressed through empowerment, autonomy and family well-being. The results underscore the strategic and complementary role of informal mechanisms in fostering women’s entrepreneurship, especially in resource-constrained rural contexts. The paper recommends that publics policies and development programs formally recognize, support and integrate these indigenous support systems as levers of inclusive and sustainable local development.