Gender and Constraints to Entrepreneurship in Africa: New Evidence from Swaziland

This paper contributes to closing a knowledge gap on gender, entrepreneurship and development by linking the entrepreneurial productivity to start-up capital and skills. The empirical analysis of a survey of entrepreneurs in Swaziland confirmed the importance of start-up capital for sales. Women entrepreneurs have smaller start-up capital and are less likely to fund it from the formal sector than their men counterparts, pointing to a possible room for policy interventions. Further, business training is positively associated with sales performance of men entrepreneurs, but has no effect on women. However, this does not call for abolishing training programs for women entrepreneurs. Instead their design and targeting should be revisited.The authors thank Mina Baliamoune, Zoroabel Bicaba, Phindile Dlamini, Nomusa Dlamini-Tibane, Thandy Khumalo, Wenli Li, Zodwa Mabuza, Neil Rankin and Audrey Verdier-Chouchane for discussions and contributions at various stages of this paper. Earlier versions were presented at the 2014 ASSA Meetings (Philadelphia) and at the African Development Bank. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect views of their respective institutions of affiliation. This was paper was also published as IZA Discussion Paper No. 927