adminAmanda Lieto
As the number of educated young women increases by the day, this has made it very difficult for them to penetrate the job market.
This is not say that their male counterparts are not equally affected.
The next alternative they have is to explore entrepreneurship.
However, this field also comes with its own challenges. It is not easy for young female entrepreneurs to access start-up capital as well as markets.
Often times when seeking funding, entrepreneurs are faced with the questions of collateral. Our social and cultural constructs make it more difficult for young women to own assets that are required as collateral by the financial institutions. High interest rates also threaten to choke the businesses.
It therefore can seem impossible for a young woman to dream big and explore entrepreneurship.
This is where collaborative thinking comes in. This is an alternative for young women who want to succeed in business. It all starts by one identifying their potential and finding the next young woman who can complement areas of weakness.
Young women today are more privileged as they have access the internet and it is a powerful tool they can use to access markets as well as do business in different parts of the world.
The use of the internet brings about new trends in business and an intriguing one is collaborative consumption. Collaborative consumption can be defined as a class of economic arrangements in which individuals share access to products and services rather than having individual ownership.
Zimbabwe’s economy has been unfavourable in providing support and access to resources for the average entrepreneur, let alone for the young female entrepreneur. However, collaborative consumption can bring about a solution to young women’s lack of access to resources.
To begin with, the fundamentals driving the sharing economy is nothing new to Zimbabwe as we have long relied on our connections, individual entrepreneurship as well as organic networks to meet their needs.
We have always rented out our houses as well as pool our vehicles, making bargains in the process. What is new with regard to this phenomenon is formalisation as well as structuring the collaborative consumption as seen by companies such as Uber and Airbnb.
Sharing economics position Africa as a good match for companies such as Uber and Girl Meets Dress. Again it is important that the sharing economy enables individuals, young women in particular, to monetise existing assets.
One may wonder what assets these young women may possess. Well, it is the knowledge and skills they have which turn out to be the most valuable assets one can have.
The drive towards a sharing economy will help businesses stay lean, especially start-ups, keeping cost structure low, solving capacity utilisation problems of fixed assets, ensuring variable costs of maintaining such assets are kept minimal since they are spread across multiple users.
Again the sharing of networks can enable start-ups to reach a wider market in their infancy stage, allowing them to grow. Collaborative consumption will bring about opportunities of access to funding by young female entrepreneurs through crowd funding or group lending which most micro-finance institutions are now offering. The barriers to access capital from financial institutions can now be addressed by sharing of resources.
Peer to peer financing is another aspect of collaborative consumption as it will allow young women to provide each other with funding to start their businesses or providing working capital for each other’s businesses.
This builds a sense of trust amongst young women and addresses the fear of competition as they become stakeholders of each other’s businesses. Growing your business to scale globally is the dream of every entrepreneur and this dream may seem unattainable for young women in Zimbabwe because to start with, the economy seems not to allow one to even start a business.
But, on the other hand, this is the ripe opportunity for young women in Zimbabwe to find space globally through collaboration.
They need to take this opportunity with a mindset open to collaboration more than competition.
If corporates and even Government starts providing quotas to procure from young women, how will they position themselves?
This is now the time to seriously consider working collaboratively as efforts of a group of young women can meet the demands from clients. Working individually may result in one failing to meet orders on time as well as fail to be consistent in supplying orders.
Once a woman fails to deliver on time, they are deemed unreliable and incompetent. However, this can be addressed if women group themselves when delivering client’s orders. Quality of products as well as standards can be developed and adhered to.
In the process of working collaboratively, skills and talent are shared and this leads to brilliant products and services being produced.
This is no longer the time for young women to feel disadvantaged as they are a potential rising force to reckon with if they work in collectives.
Working collaboratively will bring about disruptive innovations that will enable young women to access the seemingly inaccessible resources.
Amanda Lieto is a young enterprising woman who writes in her personal capacity.
Online Reporter