The Challenges of Growing Small Businesses - International Labour ...

The lack of up-to-date and comprehensive data on micro and small enterprises is a
universal problem, to a greater or lesser extent, throughout the world (World Bank, 2000;
Liedholm, 2001; Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), 2003; Kantor, 2001; and
Goheer, 2003). It is compounded in many African countries where, largely because of a
lack of resources, there are few national formal data collection structures in place. Even
when business registration systems are in place, they are not necessarily monitored and
maintained on a regular basis, making it difficult to gain an understanding of the true
nature and extent of the MSE sector (JUDAI, 2002 and UDEC, 2002). Most of the more
up-to-date information on MSEs is of a partial nature, in that small convenient sample sets
and research rationale are often driven by the needs of programme funders. Much of this
research is poverty-related or geographically specific, focussed on start-up, or related to
micro-finance, and often excludes certain sectors of enterprise such as traders (Zewde &
Associates, 2002).
As the Zambian report noted, “Most of the studies on MSEs and informal sector
enterprises carried out in the 1990s have been commissioned with limited timeframes and
were aimed at meeting donor interests, whereas the earlier studies which were academic
in nature, provide more in-depth information about women entrepreneurs and their
environment and were carried out over a longer period of time [but these are dated]”
(JUDAI, 2002, p. 38).
Furthermore, the existing government census and industry data collection
programmes rarely disaggregate their data according to sex. In Zambia the research team
noted: “the statistics provided … (by the Business Names Register) are not particularly
helpful for the express purposes of this study because they are not disaggregated by sex”
(JUDAI, 2002, p. 16).
In addition, women’s enterprises are frequently in sectors or of a scale that are not
counted, or are deemed worthy of tracking by those researching. Hence women tend to be
shown as under-represented as owners in the MSE sector (UDEC, 2002; Zewde &
Associates, 2002).
Three key themes emerged from the literature reviews as regards the form and quality
of data on women’s enterprise in Africa.
• Women are under-represented in the MSE sector in general.
• Women are over-represented, or perhaps a better expression is that their presence is
“over-exposed”, in the informal parts of the MSE sector. Many women entrepreneurs
do operate informally, and much of the research on women entrepreneurs has to date
focussed on those operating informally.
• Definitions of women’s enterprise vary so considerably that it is difficult to know
whether the findings of different studies are comparing like with like.
In summary the picture of women entrepreneurs that currently exists for the three
countries is at best partial and skewed, which makes for difficult comparison. However,
recognizing these limitations, what did the secondary research commissioned by the ILO’s
IFP/SEED tell us about women and their businesses? What is the current picture of
women entrepreneurs in Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zambia?
In this section, dealing with the findings of the preliminary research, as well as in
sections 3 and 4 dealing with the primary research, attempts have been made to comment
on similarities that have been found between the three study countries, as well as on the
apparent differences between the three countries. In addition, in order to situate the WED
research findings in a wider context, occasional reference has been made to findings from
other studies, such as the ILO study on women entrepreneurs in Pakistan (Goheer, 2003).
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