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 2023, there were 3,501 active Business Guides working across Ghana, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Tanzania to help young women create sustainable livelihoods.
Between 2020 and 2023, 78,844 women-led businesses had been supported by CAMFED Business Guides.
By the end of 2023, 112,246 CAMFED Association entrepreneurs had started 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.
In direct response to restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, CAMFED Association entrepreneurs 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 educated with CAMFED support.
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.
I am Zeolia, a CAMFED Association member and successful entrepreneur from Tanzania. I farm potatoes, keep pigs, and run an agroforestry business. I've trained as a CAMFED Business Guide to pass on my knowledge to other young rural women, and help create more opportunities in my community.
My name is Lucia, I was one of the first girls supported to go to school by CAMFED in Zimbabwe and I am plowing back the benefits of my education. I have many years of experience running a general store with my female partner, so I volunteer with CAMFED as a Business Guide, mentoring young women in business.
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 partnershipMeet some of our tenacious sisters in the CAMFED Association who are creating jobs, opportunity and tackling poverty through entrepreneurship
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.
CAMFED Association member and gender equality activist Lisa Kandanda sets out spending priorities for the Zambian nation.
In this regular monthly spotlight, CAMFED Association members from Ghana share their stories from secondary school to business success on Citi TV, Ghana.
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.
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.
I run a successful mobile phone repair and accessories business, it’s going very well! In future I hope to diversify into solar power, to bring electricity to rural and low-income communities like mine.
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.
Shobhan Porter $5000
Jordan Hess $158
Ranga Sundaravadivelu $500
Joseph LeSage $158
Stephanie Gonzales £10.6
Erik Charlston $150
Ankur Gupta $526
Natalie Anderson $106
Kris Wallace $100
Charles Rice $500
Conrad Toepfer $52.9
Stephen Rush $106
William Dodge $300
Janel Goldstein $2000
Ruth Tennen $300
When she thrives, we all thrive
Together this giving season, we can make a difference that ripples outward to benefit everyone.
