"Entrepreneurship To the Point (eTTP) conducted research in South Africa on accelerating women-owned businesses in male-dominated sectors. To better understand the key barriers to entry and growth that women-owned businesses face in male-dominated sectors, they conducted surveys of 97 women and interviews with 17 women entrepreneurs in the male-dominated sectors in South Africa. The key findings of this report are 1) women’s participation in male-dominated sectors has increased, 2) the increase is driven by women entrepreneurs' passion, 3) but they still face multitudes of challenges in entering the sector and growing their businesses, 4) while the government has pushed for some policy frameworks to support women-owned businesses, 5) women entrepreneurs need both men and women mentors, and 6) there is more need for sector-focused accelerator/incubator programs"

"The evidence is indisputable: high-growth scaling ventures are game changers. Scale-ups are the ventures that:

Create the vast majority of new jobs in an economy;
Generate the most value in the form of financial, economic and social returns;
Drive innovation and shape ecosystems;
Incubate and develop talent pipelines; and
Spawn the next generation of thriving scale-ups and the experienced entrepreneurs that create them.

Africa needs more startups that transition to scale. Many more.

But scaling is rare. And difficult. All the more so in sub-Saharan Africa, where large populations do not equate to large addressable markets, necessitating very early (and risky) expansion into new markets in search of the critical mass of customers needed to raise funding and scale a business.

Whilst there are some universal scaling principles that can and should be applied, there isn’t a formula for scaling. Because it isn’t pure science. On the contrary, scaling is predominantly an art: a unique blend of inputs, decisions and actions that is different for each scaling business."