JOURNAL OF BUSINESS DIVERSITY

Entrepreneurship Development, Business Ownership and Women

Empowerment in Nigeria

Author(s): Foluke Ademokun, Olumide Ajayi

Citation: Foluke Ademokun, Olumide Ajayi, (2012) "Entrepreneurship Development, Business Ownership and Women

Empowerment in Nigeria," Journal of Business Diversity, Vol.12, Iss. 1, pp. 72 - 87

Article Type: Research paper

Publisher: North American Business Press

Abstract:

Entrepreneurship plays an important role in economic empowerment of the perceived disadvantaged

segment of the population of which women form a larger part in the Nigerian context. Over time, what

determines women participation in entrepreneurship activities remain an important research issue.

Consequently, this study investigated the factor(s) that motivates women to be entrepreneurial and also

identified the characteristics of women business owners in Nigeria. The study sampled 200 trained

women entrepreneurs who have participated in entrepreneurship training at the Central Bank of Nigeria

(CBN) Entrepreneurship Development Centre (EDC), Lagos. The study also generates data from Network

of Entrepreneurial Women (NNEW), a gender-oriented network of the Nigeria Employers’ Consultative

Association (NECA) to compliment its 200 sample size. The essence of this was to draw a comparison

from the findings since EDC and NECA have same goal of promoting entrepreneurial activities. The data

were analyzed using descriptive statistics. The findings from the 200 trainee’s sampled shows that the

need for independence is the major reason women start a business. Furthermore, the study showed that

majority of the respondents used their personal fund to start their business and operate home based and

unregistered business that could hardly pay levy for the operation of their business. Contrary to the

traditional buying and selling businesses women did in the past, businesses in the service sector is

gradually taking over. The result from NECA’s data also validates the later.