Young women helping their peers to grow successful businesses, create sustainable jobs, and enable more children to thrive in school.
Business Guides help their peers to start and grow successful businesses, so that they can create sustainable jobs for themselves and others, build a brighter future, and enable the next generation of children to thrive in school.
The interactive six month program combines training, peer mentoring and connects young women to markets and interest-free finance opportunities.
The Guides are supported by partners and District Business Committees (DBCs) – groups of female entrepreneurs, local government representatives, gender advocates, and business & community leaders – who build local-level support for young women’s entrepreneurship.
The trained Business Guides then deliver weekly workshops to small groups of female entrepreneurs, applying knowledge to their own business data or using real-life scenarios and case studies. The sessions cover everything from business finance and marketing to customer service and business growth through technology.
CAMFED Association member Mwinji, from Isoka district in Zambia, accessed business training and a loan. With her business expansion, she is able to support herself as well as providing two girls in her community with school uniforms, books and school fees.
The Guides deliver skills and training sessions that explore how women can:
The sessions offer opportunities to reflect on variables that affect women’s entrepreneurial success including:
By the end of 2025, there were 6,723 active Business Guides working across Ghana, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Tanzania to help young women create sustainable livelihoods.
Between 2020 and 2025, 129,981 women-led businesses had been supported by CAMFED Business Guides.
By the end of 2025, 152,068 CAMFED Association entrepreneurs had succeeded in setting up a business, bringing quality food, products, services and jobs to rural communities, and using profits to send more children to school.
I feel good being a Business Guide because the program gives me confidence and the ability to explore other opportunities available for myself and the group of entrepreneurs I support.Zeolia, CAMFED Association member and Business Guide, Tanzania
CAMFED Association members took the lead in working with stakeholders in each country to develop the learning resources to support young women’s business growth. This includes a training resource for Business Guides, as well as a Business Planner for the supported entrepreneurs. Resources are endorsed and supported by relevant government partners in each country, including enterprise agencies. Gender and women’s leadership are at the core of the learning resources, with practical topics covered including the importance of financial record-keeping, identifying new business opportunities, overcoming gendered barriers, and ethics.
CAMFED Association entrepreneurs have created e-learning videos for their peers, addressing different themes such as staying safe online, using technology for business growth, effective customer service and how to conduct a “SWOT analysis” of your business. These have been widely shared across our network of young women leaders.
My story is not just mine — it represents countless girls and young women across rural Africa. By sharing it, I’m proving that disadvantaged girls can rise and transform their communities.
Hear from agribusiness expert and CAMFED Business Guide Janet in this Q&A interview with Mukamulumbu Mweemba, Program Manager at CAMFED Zambia.
I’m now an educated leader and trailblazing agripreneur, committed to plowing back to my community by training other women in climate-smart agribusiness.
At the beginning of 2022, CAMFED announced a new partnership with the Fairtrade Foundation to certify women-led shea butter businesses in Northern Ghana.
Obtaining Fairtrade certification is a fantastic opportunity for young women entrepreneurs to meet growing commercial demand for shea butter and access exciting new business opportunities.
Learn about the partnershipHear from some of our tenacious sisters in the CAMFED Association who are creating jobs, opportunity and tackling poverty through entrepreneurship
In part 1 of our blog series, ‘Crafting Change’, hear from three Tanzanian entrepreneurs Anita, Lidya, and Helina who are building thriving fashion businesses with their handcrafted designs, reinvesting in their communities and lifting others up.
When you are educated, you build confidence and you are able to make decisions that can support your personal growth, and also the growth of your community as well as the country as a whole.
In this country there are so many unemployed young people, so when I started university I was already thinking of business ideas. I didn’t want to complete my studies and find myself without opportunities, and getting into entrepreneurship also meant I could pursue something I was really passionate about. I started my groundnut processing business, called Influx Groundnuts Products, in January 2019.
We are dedicated to improving the futures of young women beyond the classroom through youth enterprise. Generating an income not only supports young women’s economic independence and the prospects for their families; it enables them to expand their reach as activists and philanthropists.
In this blog, CAMFED Tanzania Program Manager, Anna Sawaki, speaks to three enterprising young women who are selling honey.
My hairdressing business is doing very well and keeps growing. I have employed three people, including one other CAMFED Association member, and I have formally registered my business with the Tanzania Revenue Authority.
At my business we produce oyster mushrooms. I have three women and four men working for me. I have trained them in all aspects of the business from preparation of the compost to bagging the mushrooms. I’m proud to be able to support women to earn something to support their lives.
I started my business in 2021 after I found out that honey bees are responsible for pollinating 70% of crops and are vital to human existence. I started out with three hives. Now my business has expanded to 27 hives and I have four team members who are responsible for the safety and development of the farm and I also employ over 10 casual workers.
Dolores Foglio $21.40
June Ingram $10.90
Beverly Wagstaff $20.30
rodney smith $10.90
Peter Boyce £52.20
Joan Zielinski $26.60
Lauren Gimbel $60
Jennifer Dwyer $21.40
Sally VanHull $5.60
Patrice Zimmermann $21.40
Graeme Harrington $316
Scott Limpert $26.60
Bridget Palmer $100
James Stacey £500
Siatnee Chong $47.60
