Today I want to present five powerful business ideas for African women, which have huge potential. I believe that some businesses can still be lead better by one gender than the other and I want to use this occasion to inspire African women with some great ideas to start a business on the continent. A venture, in which they can use their wonderful female attributes to run incredible women-inspired African businesses. Ready? Here we go.
Start A Publication or Blog for African Women
Women love to read, inform themselves, feel inspired, share their stories, and some of them love fashion, music, gossip, or celebrities. There is a huge shortage of African inspired publications for women out there, and some of those which are out there, are very successful. Bella Naija for example – which is currently among the top visited 6,000 websites worldwide, and the top 25 in Nigeria. It was started by the now 31 year old Uche Eze as a time-filling hobby in 2006. During the little break she had between graduation and resumption of job, Uche began to blog to fill those boring moments.
Being a big lover of fashion, she started by posting scanned magazine articles, pictures and interviews of Nigeria fashion personalities. She continued this under a disguised identity until she began to have over a million hits every month and decided to unveil herself before the media would expose her in a negative way. Today, Uche’s site Bella Naija counts 10 Mio hits per months, she has been featured on Oprah and Forbes and runs a media company Bainstone Limited, which she formed in 2009.
Get started to fill a gap in your country as a writer, blogger, publicist, or content curator! Maybe you will be the owner of a successful media company one day!
Build A Mother & Baby Product Brand
Ok, here we go: Africa has the highest birth rate in the world, a fast rising middle and high income class, and strong growing markets – but you will hardly find any African manufactured, designed, or inspired mother & baby products or platforms. Frankly, the choice for related products is very limited across Africa and whatever you will find is largely imported and very expensive.
Think mother & baby accessories, baby food, mother & baby magazines, toys – the gap is absolutely huge even in Africa’s power houses such as Nigeria or Kenya. And although no start is easy, you can get going with a very simple concept.
Christine Khasinah-Odero from Supamamas has done that in 2010 and today she is a leader in Kenya’s mother & Baby market with her online publication and events for professional mums. Her events today are visited by 200 mothers at a time. It wasn’t an easy ride for her. I met Christine, who is wonderfully energetic and optimistic, personally for an interview in Nairobi last November. She kept on marching through the difficult first years and today, she has received many awards for her entrepreneurial work, her events won sponsorship interest by the likes of Pampers, and if you look at the featured vendors who want to reach the mother market with their ads on her website, you will quickly understand the various avenues in which to monetize such a business.
Or take Carol Ngige. She started Beauty Bee in 2006 after seeing a breastfeeding pillow at a friend’s house. The product was not available in Kenya and most mothers imported it or used ordinary pillows for breastfeeding.
Ngige borrowed a sewing machine from her mother, hired a tailor and started manufacturing at her home. She says she continued operating the business from her home for three years because she did not see it as a serious business. Today she runs the business under the company’s name Baby Banda and also organizes local exhibitions and fares selling products around pregnancy, mother & baby.
Produce high-end leather bags for women
This one had to be mentioned! Several African women have recently started extremely successful luxury leather bag businesses with little in hand; they started in their garage or a little workshop they rented. They buy the leather and even the dye cheaply locally, some of their investment and time went into learning the trade and training artisans how to integrate perfect finishing and luxurious details. To make their products stand out they get snake leather from special farms in Nigeria for example or ostrich skins sourced from sustainable farms in South Africa. Take Zainab Ashadu with her luxury brand Zashadu for example or Hanelli Rupert with Okapi, both all-African brands selling now in Africa, London, and New York. Other African women who have recently become extremely successful in the luxury handbag business include: Akosua Afriyie-Kumi, Buki Akib, and Abai Schulze.
Produce an African perfume or cosmetic range for women
The production of African manufactured high-quality make-up and creams is another success path for many emerging African women entrepreneurs and almost all of those who have attracted the eye of various media outlets started mixing ingredients together in their home kitchen or salon. They have managed to build million Dollar businesses from scratch. You can read their stories here if you look for more inspiration and information on how they got these businesses started.
What I have not yet come across is an African woman who successfully went into perfume production, but I believe there would be a market for African inspired perfumes with local ingredients that are known for their wonderful scents including vanilla, nutmeg, or hibiscus among many other local plants. Your biggest obstacle at this time would be to find the glass containers for your perfume to be shelved in stores, they may simply not be available. As an entrepreneur your job would be to think around that problem. One avenue you could take is to simply produce African inspired perfume and other fragrances for the fast growing beauty industry for the time being. You would produce and sell in bulk.
Become a relationship expert
Google revealed that one of the top searches among Kenyans in 2014 was relationship advice. It makes perfectly sense: Africans in the bigger cities have growing expectations towards their love partnerships and instead of swallowing relationship problems, or consulting friends, religious leaders, or the elderly – they turn increasingly to the net and to experts to find answers and support. Relationship counselling or advice is being sought after, and no-one can provide it better than a professional who has real empathy and knows the local culture, customs, and habits that may contribute to a relationship problem or crisis. Frankly, there is a huge lack of African advisers in the industry, both offline and online. While writing this article, I just came across a blog that seems to attempt to fill that gap, it’s called: Adventures from the Bedrooms of African women . Oh, it’s a site specifically designed for African women, just wanted to make sure I mention that!
The global information and self-help industry on issues around romantic relationships is a billion Dollar industry alongside business, personal growth, and spiritual advice.
Think of online publications, blogs, local and offline seminars, or private counselling sessions for couples and individuals – be professional and of real value, target the higher income class in a big African city, expats, and the Diaspora. Only they would pay. A good counselor easily makes $150 the hour (a top one makes that manifold). Now, imagine you just work 4 hours each day, which is really just half a day. And you do that five days a week. You would be earning $12,000 each month ! Needless to say that (except for possible marketing costs) you have no expenditure, because you are selling knowledge and you can set up your cosy office at home. There is also potential to scale your business revenue significantly by selling related self-help information products and running local seminars in private retreats.
It may not be a typical African thing to do quiet yet as most people would never openly seek professional help, but I believe the need and demand is there (remember it was one of Kenya’s top Google searches in 2014!) and Western lifestyle habits continue to grow among certain segments in Africa’s societies. You just need to get started with acquiring this knowledge – take a quick course in the UK or US or start reading and learning obsessively online -, be creative and resourceful about how to access this untapped market, find your clientele, and start monetizing. Be sure to own this rare niche quickly!
And if you are more interested in social enterprise building to empower other women then please read my post: 5 African Business Ideas To Empower Our Women
I hope some ideas and stories in today’s post inspired you. But if you stick like me rather to E-commerce and agribusiness, that’s wonderful, too 🙂 Now go out there, my sisters, and be great!
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I love your article. It is very inspiring and informative. Everyone seems to overlook the African Market and I was just going to give up on my business that would target the African Continent but this is truly inspiring and has motivated me not to give up.