Every Women’s Month, we talk about empowerment. We talk about inclusion. We talk about closing gaps. But perhaps the real question is: what if women had never been absent from the economy in the first place?
What if we have simply been measuring economic power incorrectly?
Traditional economic metrics tell us that women are underrepresented. We examine CEO titles, market capitalisation, unicorn startups, and boardroom representation, and conclude that women have not yet taken their place in the economy.
But those measures capture only a narrow slice of how economies actually function.
If we measured the systems that truly sustain economic life – families, food systems, informal markets, labour reproduction, community supply chains, and micro – enterprises – women would not emerge as mere participants, but as Africa’s central industrial force.
Across the continent, women dominate the core foundations of economic survival.
In many African countries, between 60% and 80% of informal traders are women.
They move food from farms to homes. They distribute goods across neighbourhoods. They manage childcare networks that allow others to work. They operate micro-enterprises that sustain entire communities. These are not side activities. They are economic arteries.
Without these networks functioning daily, many African cities would struggle to operate for even forty-eight hours.
Yet because these activities fall outside formal measurement, they remain invisible to policymakers, investors, and even economic theory.
We obsess over billion-dollar startups and ignore the multi-billion-dollar hidden economy women quietly operate every day. Though acknowledging this reality is only the beginning of the conversation.
There is another unpleasant truth we must confront.
Much of women’s economic participation in Africa has been necessity entrepreneurship rather than opportunity entrepreneurship.
Women are often pushed into enterprise not by new opportunities, but by the demands of survival. Informal trading, small-scale farming, and micro-businesses are born from persistence in structural exclusion – not from the full expression of potential.
Africa, therefore, faces a defining challenge for the coming generation. How do we move women from necessity entrepreneurship to opportunity entrepreneurship?
How might we confirm that the extraordinary resilience already demonstrated in informal economies translates into leadership within formal industries, innovation ecosystems, and national economic strategy?
One of the great paradoxes in our societies appears early in life.
Across many African education systems, girls frequently outperform boys in primary school, secondary school and even at university level. Scholastic achievement among young women is not the exception. It is often the norm.
Yet somewhere between graduation and the workplace, something changes. The trajectory bends. Opportunities narrow. Confidence is questioned. Structural expectations intervene.
In my experience building businesses and appointing leaders, I have seen talented women sometimes hesitate to accept senior management roles, not because of their capabilities, but because of perceived consequences for their families and marriages.
Success should never be a source of insecurity.
Yet in some cases, women have felt that accepting advancement could create tension if their professional standing surpassed that of their spouses.
This is not a capability problem. It is a problem of social alignment.
If we are serious about unlocking Africa’s full economic potential, then empowering women cannot stop at rhetoric or symbolic celebration. It demands deliberate effort to remove the structural and cultural barriers that quietly limit women’s advancement even when talent is evident.
It requires societies where a woman’s success strengthens a family rather than threatens it. It requires workplaces that recognise leadership in its full diversity. And it requires economic systems that measure and value the contributions that women have always made.
As a father of a daughter, this question is not abstract for me. I want her to grow up in a society where her possibilities are defined only by her goals, discipline, and imagination. Nothing more, nothing less. Her success should never need permission.
And in truth, Africa’s future prosperity may depend on whether we create that environment not just for one daughter, but for millions.
Because if we properly recognise, support and scale the economic leadership women already demonstrate every day, we will not simply be advancing gender equality.
We will be unlocking one of Africa’s largest engines of growth.
The truth is simple.
Women are not waiting to enter the economy. They have been sustaining it all along.
The task before us now is to ensure they can lead it openly, fully, and without limitation.
Adam Molai is an African industrialist and founder of TRT Investments
Every Women’s Month, we talk about empowerment. We talk about inclusion. We talk about closing gaps. But perhaps the real question is: what if women had never been absent from the economy in the first place? What if we have simply been measuring economic power incorrectly? Traditional economic metrics tell us that women are underrepresented.