Women in Sierra Leone are gaining business acumen and entrepreneurial skills. Photo: UNIFEM.

In Sierra Leone, an NGO sponsors a business plan contest that strives to change the gender makeup of the country’s entrepreneurs.

The African Foundation for Development in Sierra Leone (AFFORD-SL) creates jobs for underrepresented individuals and offers coaching and mentoring services. Despite Parliament's current review of a 30 percent quota for women to assume positions in government and leadership roles, women are largely marginalized in society. Most rural women don’t work outside the home unless it’s in agriculture, and those that do are subject to the largesse of their husbands and other males.

But AFFORD-SL, along with the Sierra Leone Ministry of Trade and Industry and the Department for International Development, seeks to improve their status through a competition called Business Bomba.

Entrants from four regions in Sierra Leone—Freetown, Makeni, Bo and Kanema—pitch business plans to NGO representatives and independent business advisors. The rigorous four-phase competition includes workshops, training and mentoring. Twenty-two finalists are selected with 12 winners representing five categories, one of which is open only to women. Each finalist must pitch a business plan to the panel of judges—a daunting task to many, as a large percentage of the population isn’t college-educated. The top winners in each category receive $23,000 to help jumpstart his or her business. Former winner Eva Roberts developed Morvigor Tea, a homegrown variety that is now available throughout the capital, Freetown.

AFFORD's contests are a low-cost way to shine light on those innovative, effective small business ideas, one Eva Roberts at a time.

In southern Afghanistan, the promise of a well-paid urban career is luring women to keyboards and men to needlework.

INVEST, a vocational training program by Mercy Corps in Helmand Province, teaches men and women trades that can lead them out of poverty. Only 28 percent of the adult Afghan population is literate, and most children can’t attend school due to either the rigidly conservative society or safety concerns. INVEST trains locals in various trades, from construction to calligraphy to mobile phone repair to sewing. So far, INVEST has enrolled nearly 9,000 students, 900 of them women.

Program organizers assumed male students in Lashkar Gah, a city of more than 200,000, would vie for construction jobs such as masonry and metal work. But some, such as former farmer Agha Wali, have chosen less stereotypically male occupations such as tailoring because it offers a chance to own their own business. Many women, on the flip side, have bypassed home-based occupations such as embroidery and embraced the tech sector.

While older students are learning skills to work from home and don’t expect office jobs due to societal constraints, the younger generation aims to forge a career path, even the women. Some liberal-minded parents are happily sending their daughters to the school. Twenty-year-old Shamsiya’s parents have encouraged her passion for learning. She hopes to one day become a computer teacher.

I want to serve my country so that our country has a good future as its future depends on us youngsters,” she told Mercy Corps. “When I go home, my parents encourage me to study and attend my lectures...every member of the society should have knowledge as through knowledge, we can solve all our problems.