The profound statement of South Africa-born poet Gift Gugu Mona holds true that “women are the backbone of many structures”.
When you build women, you have built those structures. When you break them, you have broken those structures”. So, it has not come as a surprise that Nigerian women are already embracing the HerVenture app, developed by the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women and delivered in partnership with 9mobile.
Over 24,000 women entrepreneurs have been supported through HerVenture in Nigeria so far, of whom 99% found the training delivered on the app to be very useful and 88% increased their customer numbers.
This is because the HerVenture app unlocks latent entrepreneurial potentials in women. Apart from the fact that the app empowers women, it also offers practical learnings to launch a business, manage finances, access markets, and innovative business ideas ‘on the go’.
In today’s world, it is believed that a woman who has financial independence can make choices that will change the lives of those around them and ultimately shape society for the better. Indeed, the HerVenture app is upturning the business landscape in favor of women and actively reducing spouses’ dependency rate. The preceding has established that when you empower a woman, you give financial liberation to a home.
One Nigerian woman entrepreneur who used the app commented, “I have been able to learn a lot about every aspect of business that you need to know to be able to succeed and run a well-structured business that will last for generations.”
Speaking on the benefits of the HerVenture app to women-prenuers, the CEO of the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, Helen McEachern, stated that by working with the Foundation, 9mobile is helping to level the playing field for women entrepreneurs with the essential skills they need to make their businesses resilient and grow when they could very easily go backwards.
She said that “We are delighted that this is just the start of an exciting new journey; they are thrilled to be working with 9mobile to help bring HerVenture to even more women in Nigeria. Mobile companies have a powerful role in steering women to the support, products, and services they need to grow their businesses and support economic recovery.”
According to the CEO of 9mobile, Alan Sinfield, “9mobile recognizes the importance of leveraging its technology to support significant segments of society like women, to build and grow resilient businesses through this pandemic and beyond. We’re delighted to be working with the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women to support their efforts to advance women’s entrepreneurship potentials in Nigeria.”
The HerVenture app is designed to arm business owners with the requisite know-how to grow their earnings and build their customer base. It is free of charge, easy to use and learn through, highly interactive, and is available on iOS and Android, women are simply asked to register their interest via 9mobile’s website, https://9mobile.com.ng/herventure/ in order to access it. The introduction of HerVenture is even timelier as Nigerian businesswomen continue to grapple with issues of lack of access to capital, inaccessibility to market and inadequate management capacity, amongst others.
