Women – the driving force in West Africa’s Business Landscape
The 2014 West Africa Business Woman of the Year Award Nominees represent the region's fastest-growing business segment
The CNBC Africa All Africa Business Leaders Awards, Presented By Johnnie Walker Blue Label (AABLA) are heralded as Africa's most prestigious business awards, celebrating the game-changers in the African business landscape.
The awards recognize business leaders across five categories, but one category in particular, the Business Woman of the Year Award, speaks to the most radically innovative and rapidly growing industries in West Africa: Female-driven businesses.
Women-owned businesses comprise one of the fastest growing segments of business in West Africa. In 1980, women owned only about 6% of businesses in Nigeria, but today, women own nearly 30% of all businesses, 50% of all retail businesses and 10% of all service companies. These statistics clearly reflect that the impact of female-driven entrepreneurship and leadership is crucial to the progress of West Africa's economy.
The nominees in the West African Business Woman of the Year Awards category, similar to their East and Southern African peers, reflect the tenacity, pioneering vision, boldness and rare character that it takes to become a female business leader in a business landscape that has traditionally been dominated by male counterparts.
“The Business Woman of the Year Award category in the 2014 AABLAs is populated by truly visionary women, who have contributed to their region's economy through a relentless drive to succeed. In their success, they reflect the potential that Africa holds for entrepreneurial and business-minded women,” says Joe Nazzal, Head of Reserve.
With East and Southern Africa's regional ceremonies now complete, the awards move on to West Africa on the 23rd of October, hosted at the Oriental Hotel in Lagos. After this final regional round, the winners will then go on to compete for the ultimate accolade in the awards' pan-Continental Finale event on 14th November in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Five remarkable women from West Africa have been nominated in this auspicious category: