Empowering The Economy By Investing In Women

Only one sleep to our February event ‘Investing In Women’. It’s our first physical event in Cape Town in 2022 and it’s going to be awesome.

Tomorrow evening at Workshop17 in Cape Town, we’re hosting a crew of phenomenal women entrepreneurs, Vusi Vokwana, founder of Kasi Catalyst, and Erin Louw, founder of exciting new fintech startup Xena, to unpack the topic of ‘Investing In Women’. Lelemba Phiri, founder of Africa Trust Academy, is MC for the evening. Get your tickets here (free for Heavy Chef platform members) or set a reminder for the live stream here.

Tomorrow evening marks the first Heavy Chef event in Cape Town in 2022.

I’m doubly excited because my two daughters will be watching the live stream on screens at home. I’ll be doing a short cameo to intro our guests, which will be my chance to show my girls that I’m really actually a pretty cool dad who hangs with super cool people. My daughters think I’m weird and old-fashioned. I mean, I use a vinyl record player, which to them is kinda like going for a ride on the prom on a Penny Farthing.

On Thursday evening we’re featuring three phenomenal individuals unpacking the topic: ‘Investing In Women’. Lelemba Phiri, founder of African Trust Academy and founding partner of Startup Circles, will be interviewing Erin Louw, founder of Xena.world, and Vusi Vokwana, founder of Kasi Katalyst, live on stage at Workshop17 Watershed at the V&A Waterfront in the Mother City.

The Heavy Chef team will be there in full force. We have a stunning venue and a bar packed with complimentary Backsberg wine, Goodleaf CBD water, and Sir Fruit health shots. Our event partners Xero and PayFast will be there, alongside peeps from Retail Capital, xneelo, WTC and Digital Planet. Our new tech partner Esizayo will be twiddling dials to ensure a strong livestream for those of you not joining us in person. There will be epic music, good people and bad jokes (provided by me, of course).

Also - wait for it - we have a prize for one ticket holder tomorrow: an HP Ryzen laptop provided by HP Store worth R14,000.**

Yup.

Awesome right?

We know.

So, look. There are still physical seats left. If you’re in Cape Town, come join us and get in the entrepreneur mix. If you’re feeling brave, it’s time to get ‘out there’ and amongst it again.

 BOOK HERE 

This thing about ‘investing in women’ is an important conversation.

Someone in our family once said to my two daughters (and me) that ‘women should just find a good man and raise kids’. I was stunned. I believe the world has moved on from this belief, but the statistics around women in the workplace remain dire.

• - Only 13% of executive directors in South Africa is female, including CEOs and CFOs. [PWC]
• - The overall level of female representation is consistently low across companies of different sizes, large, medium and small-cap. [PWC]
• - In 2019, less than 5% of VC funding for African startups went to companies with women co-founders. [Africa Report]

The anecdotal problem is even worse. Entrepreneur friends of mine share stories of investors asking for candid pictures as part of their ‘due diligence’, blatant sexism in pitch meetings, and openly objectifying women in casual banter.

This is crazy stuff, but it’s the reality right now - and has been for a very long time.

So, what’s the way forward?

The world’s most densely populated large country reveals some clues. When Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus started Grameen Bank in Bangladesh in the early 1980s he did so on the basis of an extraordinary insight. Grameen would lend money to the ‘most unbankable’ component of Bangladeshi business: women. Up until then, no one gave the women of Bangladesh a realistic chance. Yunus felt that women were better fighters against poverty than men and therefore would be more reliable in growing their businesses and paying back credit. The vast majority of Bangladeshi capital distributed up until that point had been aimed at men. In the eyes of the establishment, women were ‘too risky’ despite the reality that women formed a considerable facet of the entrepreneurs in the country.

Grameen Bank not only distributed capital to women, but it did so at a much lower rate than other money lenders at the time. The result? Grameen Bank became one of the most lauded success stories in Asia and was largely responsible for Bangladesh’s economic resurgence in the region.

This is a simplistic retelling of a complicated story, as there were many factors behind Grameen’s success. Since the 80s, Bangladesh has fallen back into economic hard times and corruption appears to be prevalent. Grameen has also come under scrutiny over the decades for its loan practices in different regions and sectors. However, its original brave move to back women in Bangladesh provides clues towards the path ahead. Grameen’s strategy of bucking long-held beliefs underpins the perception/reality disparity prevalent in so many cultures, including our own here in South Africa.

As of 2017, Grameen Bank had about 2,600 branches and nine million borrowers. Here’s the kicker: 97% of the borrowers were women, with a repayment rate of 99.6%. Its success has inspired similar projects in more than 64 countries around the world.

Women are disproportionately underserved as entrepreneurs in South Africa. If we don’t fix this problem, it will have far-reaching consequences. We simply cannot continue marginalizing.

The women in our society are far too important a component of our own economic resurgence. There is a significant opportunity in paying attention.

Let’s turn things around. It starts with awareness and pointed conversations. Of course, it will take waaaay more than an event and some hard questions, but tomorrow night’s session is one step. There are other organisations doing great work in this space, including Dazzle Angels, Future Females, UK SA Tech Hub and others. The struggle continues and it needs your support.

It is not just about equal opportunities. Grameen shows us that investing in women is a smart financial move.

One day in the not-too-distant future I’d love to tell my two daughters (who are teenagers now) that women used to be underrepresented in business - and they’ll laugh, kinda like the way they laugh when I tell them about using a fax machine or show them my Nirvana records.

See y’all tomorrow, either live or livestreamed.

Peace -

p.s. If you’re going to be joining for the livestream, email me your questions before tomorrow night and we’ll try to squeeze them into Lelemba’s notes. Remember to include your name and business so we can give you a shout out.

p.p.s. Heavy Chef platform members, remember you get free physical seats - just use the codes emailed to you on Monday, or email us and we’ll sort you out no muss/fuss.

** We will be awarding the prize to one of the commenters on Twitter or the chats on the various livetream channels. You have to be a physical or livestream ticket holder to win the prize. In other words, you can’t just hop onto the livestream link and expect to win yo. You got to do the things, register and all that. Gotta do some work to win these things you know?