ENTREPRENEURIAL ACTIVITIES AND GROWTH OF WOMEN BUSINESSES: A CASE OF TANZANIA

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors that affect the growth of women’s businesses in Tanzania. It focuses on education and training, financing, family, double-burden double-shift and networking and market as factors that hinder women’s business growth. To achieve this objective, a cross-section survey of women’s SMEs in Tanzania was carried out. It used a sample of 254 randomly selected women entrepreneurs from cloth, wholesaling, retailing, hair salon, food vending, handicraft, mobile money, microfinance institution, tailoring, charcoal selling, fish selling and vegetable selling businesses in Tanzania to test the four hypotheses formulated for the study’s purpose. Using Multiple Linear Regression Analysis, the study found that all four factors act as barriers to the growth of women’s businesses. It was further established that, education and training, financing, family, doubleburden double-shift, networking and markets are factors that hinder the growth of women’s businesses. The study concludes that women entrepreneurs can benefit a lot from networking events that allow them to get access to different resources. The study recommends that business from sub-Saharan Africa should learn from this study and be sensitive to how training and skills for business owners constitute important aspects for their businesses growth.