Breaking the Bias Within Tech & Entrepreneurship in Ghana: In Conversation With ZongoVation Hub

Tech-enabled start-ups on the continent are attracting the lion’s share of venture capital as they seek to solution-find in innovative ways, at scale, raising an estimated USD5.2bn in 2021, three times the amount of investment in 2020[1]. While this is exciting, the crop of founders of the leading start-ups remains niche. In Ghana for instance, the start-up founders which raised between USD14million and USD302million in the last decade are overwhelmingly male and many have been educated to the highest levels, having obtained MBAs and masters degrees from some of the top universities/business schools[2]. Incubators such as Zongovation Hub are seeking to play their part in levelling the playing field by empowering the youth and women from economically-challenged areas, specifically, Ghana’s zongo communities. Ghana’s ministry of inner cities and zongo development defines the zongo community as: “mostly migrant communities in urban areas dominated by people of northern Ghana and the Sahel region of Africa and mostly traders”. We had the privilege of having a conversation with the hub’s Events and Community Manager, Mardiya Suleiman Cheiba, to learn more about the hub and its impact upon women in the community. Here are some of the highlights of that conversation.

How did ZongoVation Hub come about?

We started with the Initiative for Youth Development to try to get the youth in the zongo community to acquire some skills. Most of the youth in the zongo community …want quick money. They run to the cyber cafes instead of going to school [and engage in sakawa]. We felt that if we don’t get these kids abreast with tech in the right way we’d leave ourselves wanting. We started in May 2018. That’s around the time the government set up a ministry for zongo communities. Even the president realised that the community contributes a lot but lacks a lot too.

What are the unique problems in the zongo community would you say?

Poverty. Illiteracy levels are high. And unemployment. Across the whole community we’re suffering. These are communities which are dominated by Muslims and in the interpretation of our religion, some of the leaders don’t get it right. For instance, they give more priority to the Islamic school than to secular schools. For a woman, it’s felt that if you’re educated too much you won’t respect your husband and feel you’re above the men. So they suppress women.

What impact does this have on work for women?

Women of the community are into [domestic] jobs- going to the market and taking care of the home. You hardly find a man sweeping the house and it’s rare to find men selling in the market, unlike in Nigeria for instance, where you see a lot of men selling. There are limits on a woman’s time. They often have to rush home before their husband gets home and look after the children. There are so many time constraints on women, while for a man, can go all out.

What kind of resistance do such women face who are breaking the mould?

They get asked questions like, “why are you so principled and so hard? When are you settling down?” Women are now opening up and going for what they want though but [it’s still tough]; that problem still exists where I’m coming from.

How is Zongovation Hub addressing this?

When we ran [a recent] programme we had married women who also joined. One lady approached me to say her husband had been complaining, asking why she was coming home late. We’ve realised that if the women are able to show their husbands what they’ve learnt, the husbands will appreciate what you’re doing and that you’re helping the family. Sometimes they want to see results. If we’re going to have programmes with women, we would want to also invite their husbands and have some orientation with them to help them to understand what the benefits will be for their wives, even though the husbands won’t go through the training themselves.

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 *Photo taken by Songhai Advisory at Theia’s Cafe, Accra

[1] According to Partech

[2] Startup List Africa and Songhai Advisory