Digital Financial Technology, E-commerce and Female Entrepreneurship in Ghana

Several demand and supply sided constraints impede the potential of women entrepreneurs in developing countries to scale up their businesses. Digital financial technologies and policies have demonstrated proven ability to impact women entrepreneurship positively via increasing their knowledge of legal and regulatory provisions, facilitating access to finance, training, skills, information, and new markets. This pilot study considers how to leverage digital financial technology in e-commerce platforms to understand the extent of improvement in access to market, credit and insurance in Ghana.  This study will train 60 female entrepreneurs in the Greater Accra region over a month and compare specific business outcomes with a control group. The treatment will entail supporting the selected female entrepreneurs to (i) register their businesses electronically (ii) adopt a simplified e-transaction recording system for recording purchases, sales, and other cost to track business performance; (iii) use digital financial services to accept payments, save, access e-credit and purchase insurance.