Problem Statement

For micro and small-scale women-led businesses, few have access to internet-enabled computers or smartphones. Sauti surveys of approximately 700 women entrepreneurs in Kenya indicate that 33% of women owned a smartphone with internet access, compared to 78% of men.

While smartphone ubiquity is increasing throughout Kenya at an impressive rate, Sauti’s interviews with target beneficiaries suggest that women face significant domestic burden constraints and would, for instance, prefer to invest profits in paying for their children’s school fees rather than purchase new technology for their businesses.

Problem Statement

Despite the prevalence of women in the workforce, many positions of power in the regulatory environment are male dominated. These include border officials, trade brokers, money changers and law enforcement. Socially disadvantaged by gender norms, their economic capacity, and without alternative sources of information, women entrepreneurs are often forced to rely on options offered by their more empowered male counterparts in the domestic economy. Women therefore may be unaware of their legal rights, market opportunities and financial risks.

With poor access to reliable information, this environment significantly increases their risks of receiving deceptive and costly misinformation, and their vulnerability to corruption and sexual exploitation.

Problem Statement

Further complicating women’s effective participation in Kenya’s economy is women’s gendered experiences operating their businesses. Women traders typically buy and sell different goods in smaller volumes, and they have different business priorities and business experiences relative to male-operated enterprises. As such, the information sources that are available do not often conform to the needs of women business owners. For example, Kenya’s online one-stop KenTrade information portal is principally oriented towards international bulk export trade with Europe, rather than small-scale trade with geographic neighbors, which are the primary markets for women entrepreneurs.

Where women can overcome the socio-cultural and technological barriers to accessing official information, relevant information is often poorly available to suit their needs.   

Problem Statement

Information resources in East Africa are typically oriented towards bigger-scale agricultural operations which are often male-dominated and have little relevance to women or MSMEs in the sector. While the sector has welcomed digitally-focused solutions such as online trade and agricultural information portals or smartphone apps, the gendered digital divide between those with access to the internet or smartphones, limits the benefits of technology-enabled interventions to women. While male traders face challenges of their own, they are often equipped with greater access to trade-related information, training, and know-how. As a result:

• MSMEs are often unfamiliar with the rights and obligations conferred to them by the trading regulatory environment often and consequently do not benefit from the protections and tariff reductions that promote small-scale traders in the region; 
• MSMEs are more likely to commit inadvertent procedural violations, which can carry serious repercussions in the form of fines and arrests; 
• MSMEs have few sources to compare retail prices for goods at each market before departure, resulting in CBTs discovering sub-optimal prices upon arrival at destination markets; 
• MSMEs have few methods to independently verify foreign currency exchange rates, which money-changers capitalize on by exaggerating minor currency fluctuations.