• During my three-year stint in Africa, one familiar sight in the morning on the roads of Nairobi and other capitals was the brisk running of ladies to work as housemaids and do other kinds of informal work. While in the villages one could see ladies getting ready to do multitasking- household chores as well as working in the fields. It was a common site to observe a lady cooking for her children and managing the M-Pesa or Airtel Money kiosk. Despite women putting in an incredible amount of work still the gender disparity was very much visible. At every stage, they face hardships, physical abuse, lack of borrowing ability and capacity, sexual abuse at work and total exploitation often resulting in failing health and mortality. It is also observed that while many females have the intrinsic ability and motivation to successfully start and run an enterprise finance is a major bottleneck. Often the meagre financial support comes from the husband which is inadequate. The collateral is often in the husband’s name thus making the wife ineligible for any assistance. Banks and other lending institutions seek credit history which is just not there. In this sense, it is the classic negative self-fulfilling prophecy.
  • Women make up half of Africa’s agriculture workforce. Yet the cumulative contribution as compared to the men is far less. As per one study, women in Africa produce 2/3rd less per unit of land than men. One of the major reasons for this difference is the absence of a level playing field that gives equal opportunity for training in skills of management of resources.
  • Women's counterparts vary differently in terms of their aptitude, leadership qualities and skills that are needed to make the rural enterprise succeed. Unless the right selection is made to identify the entrepreneurs among the ladies through proper selection tools and a proper business plan prepared the chances of success are that much less.
  • While there has been a number of studies examining various facets of entrepreneurship in an industrial-organizational context virtually nothing has been reported on examining female entrepreneurship behaviour in the agriculture sector. The agriculture sector training is very heavily skewed with inputs on the technical side ignoring the behavioural and managerial inputs.

Who is an entrepreneur?

 While research review indicates the number of traits a successful entrepreneur, must possess in order to build a successful enterprise what comes out very clearly are a few factors like having an uncanny ability to identify opportunities, take calculated risks, high degree of need to excel, skills of seamlessly forming a network of contacts, belief in his/her own efforts and desire to put in hard work. Those who consciously choose entrepreneurship as a career choice do so because of the economic freedom and psychological rewards. In this sense, she is not an exploiter of resources but the creator of wealth for her and society. It must be pointed out here that while a lot of research has taken place to understand the underpinnings of urban entrepreneurship very little research has been undertaken to study the dynamics of rural entrepreneurship. To us, this is significant because the motivations for setting up a business in rural and urban settings could be different. While in the urban areas, businesses are started due to the easy availability of resources in the rural areas businesses may be started out of economic compulsions.

  • The research review indicates that it is possible to generalise a few common traits across different cultures and settings. The research findings indicate a direct correlation between the need for achievement, locus of control and risk-taking propensity with success in the enterprise. Again, the entrepreneurial characteristics to start a business successfully are not the same as required during its growth stage or even when the business has grown significantly. The role of the entrepreneur changes during the formation, growth and peak stages. In this sense it is contextual.
  • The approach to identifying and training female agri- entrepreneurs must follow the following logical steps: We at EcoDev, have been using state-of-the-art Psychometric profiling to identify women agri-entrepreneurs and also determine their creditworthiness. We have found the administration of these tools to be extremely useful in greatly helping them to stand on their feet and make a huge difference.
  • Identification of entrepreneurial qualities using the Business Excellence Index (BXI) tool.
  • Identification of their creditworthiness using the Creditworthiness Excellence Tool(CXI).
  • Classification of the entrepreneurs in different categories based on the results.
  • Preparation of the business plan and coaching them on measuring the metrics using the Balanced Scorecard template.
  • Continuous review on a periodic basis to do the mid-course correction