Abstract
The purpose of this research is to examine women's barriers to accessing finance in the context of two sub-Saharan African countries (Kenya and Nigeria) with strong patriarchal structures and how they have managed to overcome these barriers. Current research portrays entrepreneurship as desirable and flexible, however, there are a myriad of contextual challenges and structural inequalities facing women entrepreneurs when accessing business finance. Using Ubuntu Feminism as the theoretical lens for this study to both criticise patriarchy and eurocentric constructions of feminism, we explore the strategies women have used to overcome structural barriers using the strength of ‘togetherness’. We use semi-structured interviews with 20 women entrepreneurs (10 Kenyan and 10 Nigerian women) to interrogate the richness and depth of the participant’s reflections on their experiences in accessing finance. Our findings reveal that gender plays a key role in influencing women’s access to enterprise finance in the two Sub-Saharan African contexts. Women are affected by gender stereotyping, family responsibilities and limited formal education in their pursuit of business finance. However, despite the gendered barriers towards women’s access to enterprise finance from mainstream financial systems, women are navigating these challenges by designing informal entrepreneurial financing mechanisms. This study contributes to the growing insight into women's entrepreneurship in Africa and challenges the linear arguments of women's entrepreneurship in Africa, by portraying women's agency through informal entrepreneurial financing mechanisms powered by Ubuntu Feminism. In practice, this paper raises policy-relevant questions and encourages an examination of social perceptions and gender connotations when considering issues of accessing finance in a Sub-Saharan context. While financial institutions and policymakers may assume a ‘one size fits all’ approach to business financial support, the social factors which define gender mean that women are using their agency to navigate patriarchy to design alternative financing mechanisms to support their businesses.