Announcing Road to Markets, our new programme building women’s access to markets

We are thrilled to announce the launch of our new training programme, Road to Markets, designed to empower women entrepreneurs by enhancing their access to markets.

Developed with women entrepreneurs and expert partners, Road to Markets supports women to both enter new markets and expand penetration of their existing markets in order to sustain and grow successful businesses and achieve their full potential.

The development of Road to Markets forms the latest milestone in our long-standing partnership with DHL Express. Together we have supported over 25,000 women to build businesses across Sub-Saharan Africa since 2020 and look forward to this increasing as we build on our existing impact.

We will deliver the programme’s pilot in partnership with Smart Regional Consultants (SRC) in Kenya, where economic growth, a robust digital infrastructure and increased use of e-commerce represent an opportunity to close gender gaps by opening more markets to women-owned businesses. We eagerly anticipate the positive outcomes Road to Markets will support for its 20 initial participants and their businesses, as well as the broader impacts it will catalyse.

Why does market access matter?

The ability to access markets is a key route to women entrepreneurs’ business growth and success, enabling access to inputs and suppliers as well as customers, clients and buyers. In fact, 59% of those we surveyed in 2022 reported needing better access to markets or procurement opportunities in order to address their business challenges.

Yet, women business owners in low and middle income countries experience specific, gendered obstacles to accessing markets. These include less access to capital, technology, information and training than their male counterparts, limited access to networks, gender bias and discrimination, and legal and regulatory barriers.

These obstacles leave women entrepreneurs less likely to expand into new markets compared to their male counterparts and tending to have smaller customer bases than men-owned businesses. They are less likely to import and export and to engage in e-commerce, and are underrepresented in corporate and government supply chains.

This not only means women themselves are held back from achieving their potential, but that their families, communities and wider society are all missing out. In fact, research shows that if women’s sales reached parity with men’s, the e-commerce sector alone could add nearly $15 billion to the African market.

How will we build women’s market access?

Road to Markets is a comprehensive training programme that we’ve designed with a gender lens to respond to the obstacles women face when it comes to accessing markets. The programme combines online and face-to-face support, highly tailored and localised to meet the unique needs of women entrepreneurs through cohort-based training, monthly one-to-one coaching sessions, and peer group interactions that facilitate networking.

Through a combination of masterclasses and deeper dive training sessions, the training covers market research and product adaptation, e-commerce and logistics, legal, compliance and procurement, digital marketing and outreach, and financing for expanding market access.

The programme’s model has been designed to build women’s confidence in their ability to make the decisions needed around accessing markets – confidence being a critical component to entrepreneurial success.

What will we achieve?

Through Road to Markets women entrepreneurs will improve their access to markets so that they can sustain and grow successful businesses.

Delivered in close collaboration with our expert partners, the programme is designed to support participants to:

1. Grow their businesses through improved access to markets, as a result of their increased knowledge and confidence to make the decisions needed to expand their business in line with their business goals and ambitions.
2. Develop and implement a market growth plan, which sets out their business vision, goals and steps needed to achieve and deliver on their plan.
3. Build and expand their business and personal networks, which are key to supporting their business growth in existing or new markets.

By supporting women in Kenya, and in other low and middle income countries in future years, to build successful, stable businesses, Road to Markets will catalyse the fantastic ripple effect of impact that its participants will generate as they go on to create jobs, build their families’ wealth, provide vital services for their communities, and contribute to their economies.

Taking our total number of programmes to six, the launch of Road to Markets forms a significant step in the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women’s commitment to reaching one million women by 2030. We look forward to the programme furthering our shared ambitions with partners to close the gender gap in entrepreneurship and advance women’s economic justice.