Enterprising Women in Southern Africa: When Does Land Ownership Matter?

26 Pages Posted: 10 Feb 2020

See all articles by Zuzana Brixiová

Zuzana Brixiová

University of Economics Prague

Thierry Kangoye

African Development Bank

Fiona Tregenna

University of Johannesburg - Department of Economics

Abstract

Limited access to finance is one of the major barriers for women entrepreneurs in Africa. This paper presents a model of start-ups in which firms' sales and profits depend on their productivity and access to credit. However, due to the lack of collateral assets such as land, female entrepreneurs have more constrained access to credit than do men. Testing the model on data from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys in Eswatini, Lesotho, and Zimbabwe, we find land ownership to be important for female entrepreneurial performance in terms of sales levels. This finding suggests that the small Southern African economies would benefit from removing obstacles to women's land tenure and enabling financial institutions to lend against movable collateral. While land ownership is linked with higher sales levels, it seems less critical for sales growth and innovation where access to short term loans for working capital seems to be key.

Keywords: entrepreneurial sales, innovation, credit, land, gender, Africa

JEL Classification: G21, L26, D24, O17

Suggested Citation

Brixiová, Zuzana and Kangoye, Thierry and Tregenna, Fiona, Enterprising Women in Southern Africa: When Does Land Ownership Matter?. IZA Discussion Paper No. 12926, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3534474 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3534474

Zuzana Brixiová

University of Economics Prague ( email )

Czech Republic

Thierry Kangoye

African Development Bank ( email )

Fiona Tregenna (Contact Author)

University of Johannesburg - Department of Economics ( email )

P.O. Box 524
Auckland Park 2006, Johannesburg
South Africa

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