African Women Large-Scale Entrepreneurs: Cases from Angola, Nigeria and Ghana

chapter 14 African Women Large-Scale Entrepreneurs: Cases from Angola, Nigeria and Ghana Miriam Siun, Akinyinka Akinyoade and Ewurabena Quaye Introduction This paper critically examines the road to prosperity for three African women entrepreneurs of large-scale businesses within male-dominated fields of portfolio – investments, oil production and construction. Angolan Isabel Dos Santos, Nigeria’s Folorunsho Alakija and Ghana’s Dr. Theresa Oppong-Beeko are highly ranked among the wealthiest women in Africa. In fact, Dos Santos and Alakija are positioned as number eight and number thirteen in terms of personal wealth on the continent irrespective of gender, as contained on the African section of Forbes’ annual list of the world’s billionaires.1 Dos Santos, Alakija and Dr Oppong-Beeko have firmly established themselves and their companies in their respective industries, despite the challenges women face to enter these spaces. In some quarters, their individual trajectories to wealth calls meritocracy into question, as claims of patrimonialism and corruption is sometimes used to taint their accomplishments. This necessitates further studies on the obstacles for African women to become large-scale entrepreneurs without personal connections to influential people/high profile leader- ship. In conclusion, this paper warns against uncritical praise of success stories on the basis of gender and takes a class-based approach to the study of women and entrepreneurship in Africa. In the mid-to-late twentieth century, Africa was afflicted with political and economic turmoil that made the continent unattractive to both domestic and foreign investors. Failure of most of its countries in attracting foreign investment, coupled with capital flight as domestic savers sought investment op- portunities in more stable economies abroad further dampened the economic outlook (Mbaku, 2013). But by the turn of the century, economic and gover- nance reforms brought about positive changes, bringing the African continent back on the road to recovery. As many as thirty-six governments in sub-Saharan Africa have significantly improved their economies’ regulatory environments, 1 See 2016 online edition – http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/list/#version:realtime. © Miriam Siun et al., 2017 | doi 10.1163/9789004351615_015 This is an open access chapter distributed under the Miriamterms ofSiun, the Akinyinka CC BY-NC-ND Akinyoade, 4.0 license.and Ewurabena Quaye - 9789004351615 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 06:06:04PM via free access 324 Siun, Akinyoade and Quaye leading to increased trade and investment (Mbaku 2013). In the past decade, multinational corporations have set up businesses and invested heavily across the continent. And there is also a concomitant increase in numbers of Afri- can business moguls, managing large enterprises with ever-increasing and improving intra-African network of subsidiaries and trading, generating jobs, contributing to decline in poverty levels and increase in national economic productivity. Several Africans now feature in the Forbes annually published list of billionaires. The emergence of Aliko Dangote of Nigeria on Forbes’ list of billionaires, particularly as the richest black man, has spurred interest in knowing the rich in Africa, examining the sources and extent of their wealth. Forbes’ list is in- teresting in that it goes beyond the cliché of listing billionaires’ acquisition of wealth on the basis of corrupt practices, but as entrepreneurs.2 In more recent times, the breaking down of such annual billionaire list has also yielded in- formation on ranking of rich African women. Prominent in this list are Isabel Dos Santos and Folorunsho Alakija whose businesses span international net- works. Theresa Oppong-Beeko is added based on the “nationally concentrated” but highly successful business venture. In this chapter we examine the level of wealth of these three African women entrepreneurs, and the pattern of their wealth acquisition. It has been observed that the majority of women in developing economies are in micro enterprises with limited potential for growth, and a pattern still exists that the bigger a firm, the less likely it is to be headed by a woman. But very recently, the ilo (2016) estimates that women entrepreneurs account for about one-third of all businesses in the formal economy worldwide. The emergence of a growing community of women entrepreneurs is a significant economic and social development, which has profound implications for re- shaping the modern global economy. Much of the available data on women entrepreneurs comes from studies in developed economies. In the transition- ing economies, investigations of the motivations and aspirations of women entrepreneurs in Africa’s formal sector have been relatively limited, and where present, the focus is mostly on the informal sector. This paper attempts to shed light on female entrepreneurs in the formal sector. 2 Forbes tracks the wealth of African citizens who reside on the continent. Individual net worth are calculated using stock prices and currency exchange rates from the close of business on Friday, 7 November. To value privately-held businesses, Forbes “couples estimates of revenues or profits with prevailing price-to-sales or price-to-earnings ratios for similar public companies.” Miriam Siun, Akinyinka Akinyoade, and Ewurabena Quaye - 9789004351615 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 06:06:04PM via free access <UN> African Women Large-Scale Entrepreneurs 325 Some questions arise as this study sets out to document and assess the level, extent, trends and patterns of sources of wealth of selected African women entrepreneurs of large scale businesses with turnover running into millions of dollars. Who are these African women entrepreneurs? Where are they active? What motivates their entrepreneurship? What unique challenges do these women face, and how are they overcoming them? This paper does not set out to give an in-depth analyses of the sources of wealth of the selected women. Rather, light is shed on the level of wealth and the entrepreneurial motivation of three African women who own and run large-scale businesses. Having a deeper understanding of women’s entrepreneurship for large-scale businesses requires an examination whether women suffer disadvantages aris- ing explicitly from their gender on their trajectory to prosperity. In general, major barriers facing women entrepreneurs are access to credit, managerial skills and cultural barriers such as prevention from access to formal educa- tion (Palmerlee 2002). Not only that women-controlled businesses are often small, women’s participation in official trade missions is usually quite minimal (oecd). The low participation or representation of women in management of large scale enterprises have been explained by the argument that because male counterparts do not face the same pressures of trade-offs between business and family responsibilities, males can make a greater time commitment to their businesses. For women entrepreneurs in particular, personal considerations appear to override economic considerations in the business expansion decision (Roomi and Parrott 2008; Cliff 1998). While some studies have dem- onstrated the link between family responsibility pressures and lower growth patterns among women-owned firms, other studies have also shown the vital importance of a supportive family environment for a successful woman entre- preneur (Powell and Eddleston 2013; Sandberg 2003; Loscocco 1991). Motivations for starting a business can vary almost infinitely, but a basic distinction is made between so-called “necessity” and “opportunity” factors by Quartey et al. (2014), building on differentiation provided by Mumuni et al. (2013). Basically, necessity entrepreneurs go for entrepreneurship due to lack of choice while opportunity entrepreneurs arise due to quest for independence (see also: Aidis et al. 2006; Maritz 2004; Perunović 2005). Adom and Williams (2012) also discovered that women informal entrepreneurs are predominantly necessity-driven while men are principally intentional (opportunity driven) participants in informal entrepreneurship. However, over time, some women change from the state of being out-of-necessity entrepreneurs to become more opportunity-driven entrepreneurs. Comparative studies assessed by Quartey et al. (2014) suggest that w omen are motivated to a higher degree than equally qualified men to become Miriam Siun, Akinyinka Akinyoade, and Ewurabena Quaye - 9789004351615 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 06:06:04PM via free access <UN> 326 Siun, Akinyoade and Quaye entrepreneurs for family-related lifestyle reasons; and that women are less motivated than men by wealth creation and advancement reasons. The empirical analysis of a survey of entrepreneurs in Swaziland confirmed the importance of start-up capital for sales. Women entrepreneurs have smaller start-up capital and are less likely to fund it from the formal sector than their male counterparts (Brixiová and Kangoye 2016; Aliata et al. 2013). While this may further explain why there are more women entrepreneurs of small businesses, it also sign-posts space for policy interventions to strengthen women’s accessibility to credit for larger businesses. However, feminist scholars are increasingly critical of the prevailing discourse within women and entrepreneurship studies, and arguing for social change and not only remedial policy-initiatives e.g. efforts to increase access to finances (see

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