Women and girls around the world continue to make strides and break down barriers. But despite decades of work to achieve gender equality, the disparity between men and women remains, and is growing at an alarming rate.

African women entrepreneurs face a number of challenges, including economic exclusion and discrimination from financial systems. Despite these obstacles, African women continue to excel in entrepreneurship, with the United Nations reporting that Africa has the highest female entrepreneurship rate in the world at 27 per cent.

The adoption of tech tools has been proven to assist businesses take advantage of opportunities to scale.Google has been focusing on women in the African region, providing support by connecting them with the best of its resources and providing continuous support through mentoring. One of such is the Google Hustle Academy.

Three African women from Motswana, Nigeria and South Africa, who had benefited from Google training, spoke on the impact of tech tools on their businesses.

Chief Growth Officer of Brastorne, Naledi Magowe, from Motswana, who is focused on closing the digital divide for rural African communities said: “We realised the potential of leveraging technology to grow our business quite early in our journey. As we saw the digital gap affecting rural populations especially farmers, including women, we knew that technology could be the bridge to connect them with essential information, markets and opportunities.

“Technology is a powerful enabler, especially widely adopted and accessible technologies, which landed us to the mobile phone solutions that are relevant to that specific market. So, from the inception of Brastorne, integrating technology was a key strategy to achieve our mission and impact.” Magowe noted that navigating the tech landscape had its challenges, especially as a non-technical founder.

“Learning about different technological solutions, building the platform, product design and ensuring its accessibility to users without smartphones or data bundles required a steep learning curve. However, with determination, continuous learning and collaborating with tech experts, we were able to successfully develop and deploy our platform to reach and empower rural communities in Africa,” she added.

On her part, Founder of O’lam Creations, Mobolaji Olamide Jaji, said, “as an entrepreneur, steering off as a sole proprietorship business and the one doing almost all the major job functions wasn’t sustainable for the business in the long run, but as time went and the business grew it was evident I needed to upgrade my ways of doing things. As staff strength increased, revenue increased and customer base grew, I had to adopt tech by leveraging digital tools to help track, streamline processes and increase efficiency and productivity.”

Jaji noted that navigating tech for business doesn’t come easy. But with an open mind, knowing that change is part of growth, she embraced change and adapted to changes as the need arose with the introduction of tech tools and their applications.

“Every challenge we encounter on the business opens up the need to involve systems and streamline processes which involves us adopting digital applications and platforms to achieve seamless business operations. I took a lot of trainings to gain the exposure and knowledge to the tech tools that was relevant to my business and upgrade my ways of doing things around my business,” she said.

On the number of women who are embracing tech today, Jaji said tech has improved the lives of a lot of women, making it easier to break geographical barriers and expand reach beyond boundaries.

“It has increased productivity as women can multitask seamlessly whilst still maintaining their primary roles and functions. It is a tool of empowerment and liberation,” she noted.

For Chief Executive of Flowers by Colleen, Colleen Petersen, social media has always been a big part of her business from the beginning. However, she really started maximising tech tools during COVID-19 pandemic when direct selling became a challenge and she had to look at different ways of reaching more customers.

The South African noted: “Tech has always played a huge role in my life coming from a generation who went from typewriters to computers and working in the corporate environment it came naturally. I think most women owned businesses in South Africa automatically know that they need to introduce tech into their business; I rate it quite high.”

Speaking on how the Google Accelerator Programme has aided her activities, Magowe said it has provided invaluable mentorship, resources and networking opportunities that helped refine her business model, scale operations and connect with like-minded innovators. For Jaji, the programme has helped her track performance and growth through Google analytics, adding that it has increased her customers’ loyalty and trust through feedbacks from customer reviews and ratings. Peterson, on her part, said the programme has afforded her the opportunity to not only learn more about how to market online but also how to implement things like a business plan and created an awesome interactive platform.