TENDAYI Mamvura, the president of the Professional Women Executives and Business Women's Forum (Proweb), believes that women in business are often held back by a single, self-imposed obstacle: their mindset.
Specifically, she said, is the notion that they are inherently disadvantaged and reliant on external solutions.
"I think the biggest challenge is our mindset For too long, we have been sitting on the empowerment mountain. Now, it’s time for women to apply what they have learned and start building real wealth,” she told NewsDay Business.
Proweb has long championed women’s access to finance, an area where they have faced barriers.
Female entrepreneurs often find it difficult to secure loans, primarily due to a lack of collateral.
Mamvura explained that the organisation’s pivotal shift was encouraging women to invest in real estate to build their own collateral.
“No reasonable lender will give you money without security. Instead of waiting for banks to change policies, we started encouraging women to invest in real estate, no matter how small, so they can build their own collateral,” she said.
One of the organisation’s milestones has been the success of its Property X initiative, which helps women acquire affordable properties, allowing them to access funding and scale up their businesses.
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To help women overcome key barriers, Proweb has established four strategic pillars.
These are financial literacy where it teaches women to manage money, invest and build wealth; legal literacy, ensuring women understand business laws and regulations for informed decision-making; digital literacy where it encourages women to leverage technology for business growth; and networking in which it helps women to create strategic connections to access more opportunities.
Proweb runs bi-weekly masterclasses featuring industry experts who provide practical insights for female entrepreneurs where experts are invited to share practical insights, helping the women gain the knowledge necessary to thrive in their respective fields.
“We are laying the foundation in terms of the knowledge in those areas. We trust that this will help people understand and interact better, especially when negotiating deals,” Mamvura said.
“They will have a better understanding of the numbers, the legal framework, and the digital tools available to them.”
Looking ahead, she said empowerment was not an end goal but a means to achieving prosperity.
“We want women to take the skills we have provided and apply them to build successful businesses,” Mamvura said.
“We cannot spend a lifetime empowering people and they don’t use the skills. If I empower you, what do you do with that empowerment if you don’t build prosperity? What we want is for women to take the skills we have given them and apply them to their businesses.”
For the past 20 years, Proweb has worked to empower women in business and leadership.
Through various programmes, the organisation has helped women build capacity, improve financial and legal literacy, and establish networks to grow their enterprises.
Female entrepreneurs make up more than half of the informal sector in Zimbabwe.
