As part of a series of new initiatives targeted at assisting women-owned businesses, Google’s philanthropic arm, Google.org, has pledged $1 million in charitable funding to support programs that help women entrepreneurs build their businesses.
According to Mojolaoluwa Aderemi-Makinde, Google’s Head of Brand and Reputation for Africa, 58 percent of small and medium-sized business (SMB) Entrepreneurs in Africa are women, “despite this, women-run enterprises demonstrate, on average, 34 percent lower profits than their male counterparts.” They also have a worse chance of receiving money and investment. This is why, today, we’re unveiling a number of programs geared at assisting women in growing their businesses.”
“Google has begun an intense initiative to drive the identification of women-owned businesses through Google Business Profiles,” Makinde said.
Google Business Profile, which lets businesses construct a free webpage to make them easier to locate online, and Primer, an app-based skills-building platform that allows business owners to access a series of free, custom-designed, bite-sized lessons on the go, are two of these tools.
Google has dedicated the March cohort of the Hustle Academy to women-owned SMBs in order to assist them to enhance their talents.
The Hustle Academy, which debuted last month, is a free, week-long Bootcamp aimed at helping small businesses gain the expertise they need to grow.
In addition to the cash, Google has launched #LookMeUp, a movement to highlight and tell the experiences of female entrepreneurs.
Women like Vivian Nwakah of Nigeria, who founded Medsaf, a pharmaceutical supply chain solution to help Nigerians gain access to quality pharmaceutical health care services, Mary Mwange, CEO and founder of Data Integrated in Nairobi, Kenya, who is driving innovation in the mobile payments sector, and Mosa Mkhize of South Africa, who founded Origins Publishers to provide her children – and others like them – with books in their native languages.
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