The first Women Entrepreneurs Network (WEN) Forum aiming at enhancing the entrepreneurship ecosystem for women in Egypt took place in Cairo earlier this week.

Under the slogan “Synergy in Action: Inspiring Inclusive Impact,” the event featured many experts in the field, including the successful owners of female startups who had managed to turn their ideas into thriving businesses and shared their experiences at the Forum during panels and workshops.

Taking place at the American University in Cairo (AUC), the Forum aimed to discuss the challenges facing women in starting their own businesses in Egypt and how to overcome them.

“The journeys of these leaders shaped by their unique visions and the challenges they’ve triumphed over are powerful sources of inspiration for others. They show us that success is not reserved for a select few, but achievable for all,” WEN President Noha Abdel-Hamid told participants at the Forum.

“Our mission is to empower female entrepreneurs whether through strategic partnerships with the private sector, sharing cultural technical resources, or expanding networks that open the door to new opportunities.

She stressed the need for policies that foster innovation and equality and for outreach to female entrepreneurs in other governorates.

Experts at the Forum shared their view that barriers can sometimes face female entrepreneurs, recommending creative methods of confronting them. There were also success stories from successful female company owners.

All the experts acknowledged that there could be cultural barriers facing a woman starting a business in Egypt and that there should be methods of overcoming these without changing society.

There should be more legal support for women in the field to make it easier for others, the said, also recommending more financial and technical literacy programmes.

Initiator of the Nawara programme for empowering female entrepreneurs Ahmed Bayoumi said that the programme had started to help women sell chicken feed in the Beheira governorate in a market then dominated by men.

They had started training women on how to sell this product with the aim of providing them with a profitable business and also more generally empowering them.  After the end of the first phase of the project, there were more women seeking to join it, he said.

A female startup owner should aim to work with an experienced business owner, said Dalia Ibrahim, founder of Edventures, an ed-tech-focused corporate venture capital company.

“If you join forces with other investors, they will give you more support and experience. Being by yourself is not always a good idea. You need to learn from others,” she commented.

Ibrahim said that partnering with an experienced business owner could lend more credibility to startups and encourage others to invest and help them grow.

She said sole project owners had a 60 per cent chance of success in the industry, but the percentage was higher for those who have partners. She stressed the importance of mentors for startup owners, highlighting the fact that partners are not only sought for financial purposes.

Having more than one mentor is also advisable, she noted, adding that in the event of conflict a wise third person to mediate is also important.

Among the challenges faced by women wanting to start their own businesses in Egypt are social barriers, like parents preferring their daughters to work in the public sector rather than starting their own businesses, said Rania al-Razaz, Managing Director of the Al-Alfi Foundation which focuses on human and social development through education and capacity building for Egyptian scientists, educators, and gifted students.

Al-Razaz said that the number of female entrepreneurs in Egypt is less than a third of the number of males and that this number needs to be increased. According to 2022 figures from the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS), only around 17 per cent of the work force are women.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 21 November, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly under the title: Empowering women