Anne-Marie Chidzero is the chief investment officer of FSD Africa Investments, an organisation that aims to reduce poverty through stronger financial markets. She also helped launch a fund, Alitheia IDF, that invests in female-led companies, and is a vocal supporter of the importance of gender balance in business and markets for the continent.
African women tend to be excluded from manual jobs on offer in the manufacturing or agriculture sectors because of social stigma and discrimination. If the gap between less inclusive countries and advanced economies were filled, based on the male-to-female participation ratios of 2018, 44 million African women would have joined the labour market across the continent, noted Andinet Woldemichael of the African Development Bank in an opinion piece for think-tank Brookings’s Africa Growth Initiative. Naturally, this would have translated into large economic gains: in the case of Niger, for example, it would have boosted gross domestic product by nearly 50%.
