Introduction

This paper critically examines the road to prosperity for three African women entrepreneurs of large-scale businesses within male-dominated fields of portfolio – investments, oil production and construction. Angolan Isabel Dos Santos, Nigeria’s Folorunsho Alakija and Ghana’s Dr. Theresa Oppong-Beeko are highly ranked among the wealthiest women in Africa. In fact, Dos Santos and Alakija are positioned as number eight and number thirteen in terms of personal wealth on the continent irrespective of gender, as contained on the African section of Forbes’ annual list of the world’s billionaires. ¹ Dos Santos, Alakija and Dr Oppong-Beeko have firmly established themselves and their companies in their respective industries, despite the challenges women face to enter these spaces. In some quarters, their individual trajectories to wealth calls meritocracy into question, as claims of patrimonialism and corruption is sometimes used to taint their accomplishments. This necessitates further studies on the obstacles for African women to become large-scale entrepreneurs without personal connections to influential people/high profile leadership. In conclusion, this paper warns against uncritical praise of success stories on the basis of gender and takes a class-based approach to the study of women and entrepreneurship in Africa.

In the mid-to-late twentieth century, Africa was afflicted with political and economic turmoil that made the continent unattractive to both domestic and foreign investors. Failure of most of its countries in attracting foreign investment, coupled with capital flight as domestic savers sought investment opportunities in more stable economies abroad further dampened the economic outlook (Mbaku, 2013). But by the turn of the century, economic and governance reforms brought about positive changes, bringing the African continent back on the road to recovery. As many as thirty-six governments in sub-Saharan Africa have significantly improved their economies’ regulatory environments, leading to increased trade and investment (Mbaku 2013). In the past decade, multinational corporations have set up businesses and invested heavily across the continent. And there is also a concomitant increase in numbers of African business moguls, managing large enterprises with ever-increasing and improving intra-African network of subsidiaries and trading, generating jobs, contributing to decline in poverty levels and increase in national economic productivity. Several Africans now feature in the Forbes annually published list of billionaires.

The emergence of Aliko Dangote of Nigeria on Forbes’ list of billionaires, particularly as the richest black man, has spurred interest in knowing the rich in Africa, examining the sources and extent of their wealth. Forbes’ list is interesting in that it goes beyond the cliché of listing billionaires’ acquisition of wealth on the basis of corrupt practices, but as entrepreneurs. ² In more recent times, the breaking down of such annual billionaire list has also yielded information on ranking of rich African women. Prominent in this list are Isabel Dos Santos and Folorunsho Alakija whose businesses span international networks. Theresa Oppong-Beeko is added based on the “nationally concentrated” but highly successful business venture. In this chapter we examine the level of wealth of these three African women entrepreneurs, and the pattern of their wealth acquisition.

It has been observed that the majority of women in developing economies are in micro enterprises with limited potential for growth, and a pattern still exists that the bigger a firm, the less likely it is to be headed by a woman. But very recently, the ilo (2016) estimates that women entrepreneurs account for about one-third of all businesses in the formal economy worldwide. The emergence of a growing community of women entrepreneurs is a significant economic and social development, which has profound implications for reshaping the modern global economy. Much of the available data on women entrepreneurs comes from studies in developed economies. In the transitioning economies, investigations of the motivations and aspirations of women entrepreneurs in Africa’s formal sector have been relatively limited, and where present, the focus is mostly on the informal sector. This paper attempts to shed light on female entrepreneurs in the formal sector.

Some questions arise as this study sets out to document and assess the level, extent, trends and patterns of sources of wealth of selected African women entrepreneurs of large scale businesses with turnover running into millions of dollars. Who are these African women entrepreneurs? Where are they active? What motivates their entrepreneurship? What unique challenges do these women face, and how are they overcoming them? This paper does not set out to give an in-depth analyses of the sources of wealth of the selected women. Rather, light is shed on the level of wealth and the entrepreneurial motivation of three African women who own and run large-scale businesses.

Having a deeper understanding of women’s entrepreneurship for large-scale businesses requires an examination whether women suffer disadvantages arising explicitly from their gender on their trajectory to prosperity. In general, major barriers facing women entrepreneurs are access to credit, managerial skills and cultural barriers such as prevention from access to formal education (Palmerlee 2002). Not only that women-controlled businesses are often small, women’s participation in official trade missions is usually quite minimal (oecd). The low participation or representation of women in management of large scale enterprises have been explained by the argument that because male counterparts do not face the same pressures of trade-offs between business and family responsibilities, males can make a greater time commitment to their businesses. For women entrepreneurs in particular, personal considerations appear to override economic considerations in the business expansion decision (Roomi and Parrott 2008; Cliff 1998). While some studies have demonstrated the link between family responsibility pressures and lower growth patterns among women-owned firms, other studies have also shown the vital importance of a supportive family environment for a successful woman entrepreneur (Powell and Eddleston 2013; Sandberg 2003; Loscocco 1991).

Motivations for starting a business can vary almost infinitely, but a basic distinction is made between so-called “necessity” and “opportunity” factors by Quartey et al. (2014), building on differentiation provided by Mumuni et al. (2013). Basically, necessity entrepreneurs go for entrepreneurship due to lack of choice while opportunity entrepreneurs arise due to quest for independence (see also: Aidis et al. 2006; Maritz 2004; Perunović 2005). Adom and Williams (2012) also discovered that women informal entrepreneurs are predominantly necessity-driven while men are principally intentional (opportunity driven) participants in informal entrepreneurship. However, over time, some women change from the state of being out-of-necessity entrepreneurs to become more opportunity-driven entrepreneurs.

Comparative studies assessed by Quartey et al. (2014) suggest that women are motivated to a higher degree than equally qualified men to become entrepreneurs for family-related lifestyle reasons; and that women are less motivated than men by wealth creation and advancement reasons. The empirical analysis of a survey of entrepreneurs in Swaziland confirmed the importance of start-up capital for sales. Women entrepreneurs have smaller start-up capital and are less likely to fund it from the formal sector than their male counterparts (Brixiová and Kangoye 2016; Aliata et al. 2013). While this may further explain why there are more women entrepreneurs of small businesses, it also sign-posts space for policy interventions to strengthen women’s accessibility to credit for larger businesses. However, feminist scholars are increasingly critical of the prevailing discourse within women and entrepreneurship studies, and arguing for social change and not only remedial policy-initiatives e.g. efforts to increase access to finances (see Ahl 2004, 2006; Calas et al. 2009; Vossenberg 2013).

Much of the literature on women and entrepreneurship approaches the topic from a liberal feminist point of view, i.e. that men and women are equal, but that discrimination effects the latter. This has seemingly led to studies focusing on identifying various constraints for successful entrepreneurship (see e.g. unido 2001), but also studies on individual success stories in order to provide policy-recommendations (see uneca 2007). This study also focuses on the individuals. However, the intention is not to diminish the effects of structural constraints by highlighting individual characteristics, instead, it is to show how privilege changes the way gender impacts entrepreneurship. A structural approach is particularly important to consider in relation to the three women in this study because of corruption allegations, which leads to questions regarding their business acumen. Questionable business practices notwithstanding, these women provide an entry point to a presently understudied area within gender and entrepreneurship in Africa, namely the functioning of gender amongst elites. In the following section, Isabel Dos Santos, Folorunsho Alakija, and Theresa Oppong-Beeko are examined according to their level of wealth, types of business ventures, and entrepreneurial motivations.

Isabel Dos Santos, Angola

Isabel Dos Santos is Africa’s richest woman (and the 8th richest African), currently aged 43 years, whose real time net worth as of 11 July 2016 is $3.4 billion. She holds a Bachelor of Arts/Science, King’s College. ³ In 2015 she was named one of the most influential women in the world for her success as a businesswoman ( bbc 2015). Her business career dates back to 1997, when at age 24 years, she invested in a small restaurant in Luanda called “Miami Beach”. There are no exact figures of the sum of her investment, which is rumored to have been a small amount, but seemingly paved the way for a continued interest in investments, which are the source of her wealth. Her present fortune mainly comes from investments in key sectors in the Angolan economy: diamonds, oil, cement but also telecom and banking, with acquisitions in far-a-field Portugal (Dolan 2013).

Angola is one of the world’s largest diamond producers, which, for example in 2014, generated revenue of us$1.6 billion, according to provisional figures from the country’s Ministry of Geology and Mines (macauhub 2015). Diamond export is the second largest source of revenue for Angola after oil. The industry was initially monopolised by the state-owned company Endiama. However in 1999 Endiama agreed to form a joint-venture diamond trading company together with the companies Group Goldberg, Leviev Wellox and Trans Africa Investment Services (tais – a Gibraltar-based holding company in which she was the largest shareholder with 75 per cent together with her mother Tatiana Kukanova; De Morais 2015). Isabel Dos Santos’ share in Ascorp amounted to 24.5 per cent, which at the time was generating millions of dollars monthly (Dolan 2013). However, the diamond sector in Angola has been marked with international scrutiny due to violence in the Lundas part of the country where the gems are being extracted (De Morais 2015). The “blood diamond” controversies seemingly led Dos Santos to transfer all of her shares in tais to her mother in 2004 and the company changed its name to Iaxonh Limited (Ibid.). Dos Santos later moved on to telecommunications, which proved highly lucrative.

The Angolan telecommunications sector was under state monopoly, as Angola Telecom, until 2000 when the Commission of the Council of Ministries “conceded to Unitel the license to exploit, in all national territory, the complementary service of mobile cell phone gsm.” Dos Santos was part of the founders of Unitel and acquired 25 per cent of the company, which since its entry into the Angolan market has generated revenues of $2 billion annually, leading to estimates of Dos Santos’ share being worth $1 billion (Dolan 2013). Interestingly, in 2014 Dos Santos was reported in a bid to takeover Portuguese company Portugal Telecom for $1.5 billion through her Lisbon-based holding company Terra Peregrin-Participacoes sgps sa (Lima 2014). Portugal Telecom had earlier purchased 25 per cent of Unitel for $16.2 million in 2000; Isabel Dos Santos’ bid for the company signposted a desire not only to increase her shares within Unitel, but also to spread business ventures abroad. She later withdrew her bid due to a ruling by the Portuguese Securities Market Commission (cmvm), which required her to raise her offer (Reis 2014). In the abovementioned cases we observed that Dos Santos buys shares in other companies through holding companies based outside of Angola. This strategy has been used to acquire stakes in the Angolan oil-sector as well, which has raised questions of legality.

The oil sector is controlled by state enterprise Sociedade Nacional de Combust́ıveis (Sonangol), which is in charge of concessions for oil exploration. Revenue from crude oil export amounts to 93–95 per cent of the country’s exports, and 80 per cent of the gdp (Ovadia 2012). In the same way as the telecom sector opened up for private companies, access to the oil sector was written into law in 1978 through the General Petroleum Activities Law, which permits Sonangol to conduct joint explorations with foreign companies (Ibid.). Galp Energia is Portugal’s largest oil and gas company worth an estimate of €9.5 billion (Maka Angola 2016). Sonangol owns Galp shares through Esperanza Holding bv, a company that was registered at the Dutch Chamber of Commerce (Handelsregisterhistorie) as belonging to Sonangol in 2005, ⁴ but also has an indirect stake through 15 per cent ownership of Amorim Energia (Pamuk 2012). However, in 2006 Esperanza Holding bv signed a contract with Exem Africa Limited, another holding company based in the British Virgin Islands. According to Maka Angola, “the contract specifies that Sonangol is the sole source of funds that will be invested in Galp in the name of both parties,” and that Exem, which belongs to Dos Santos, receives 40 per cent of the Galp shares acquired by Esperanza Holding (Maka Angola 2016). In June 2016, given her track record in business, Isabel Dos Santos was appointed head of Sonangol to turn around the company’s fortunes. This company, despite being responsible for half of Angola’s gross domestic product (gdp) had hitherto been unproductive and ran in an opaque manner (Allen 2016).

In the Global Entrepreneurship Summit 2014 in Marrakech, Dos Santos spoke on the usefulness for foreign companies interested to invest in Africa to have a knowledgeable local partner. ⁵ One of the key factors in her success has been to fill that role. All of the aforementioned business ventures have been formed through the opening of previously state-owned enterprises for private investment. One of Dos Santos’ biggest business partners has been Portugal’s richest man, Américo Amorim. Dos Santos owns 45 per cent of Amorim Energia, ⁶ which in turn holds 33.34 per cent of Galp, implying an additional indirect stake in Galp. The Dos Santos – Amorim partnership has therefore meant that in as much as Dos Santos has been the local partner when Amorim has invested in Angola, the reverse has also taken place. In 2012 Dos Santos’ investments in Portugal were reportedly worth €785.5 million. In the same year, she became the main shareholder of zon Multimedia, a Portuguese media conglomerate, and also increased her shares in Banco bpi for €46.7 million (Costa 2012). What becomes apparent is thus that the partial privatisation of Angolan parastatals, alongside having connections to major investors has been crucial in Dos Santos business activities.

Messiant (2001) argues that the previously Marxist-oriented regime of Angola has gradually moved towards a political economy on the basis of capitalism and clientelism. Indeed, since the mid-1990s, the government has increasingly liberalised the economy, and introduced new legislation, which aimed to attract foreign capital. ⁷ The Angolan Industrial Development Plan for 1998–2000 clearly indicated a desire to decrease state-ownership, by approving the privatisation of one quarter of previously state-owned companies (Europa 2003). This shift is visible in the legal reforms in the most lucrative sectors of the national economy, which has been implemented before the 1990s, but also in the way that “[F]or almost half a century, rival social groups had competing ideas of Angola, of what the country was, should aspire to become […] and the unprecedented oil boom…meant that only the mpla party elites ideas of Angola would hold sway” (De Oliveira 2016).

As previously discussed, the transactional history in the acquisition of Galp shares by Dos Santos with funding from Sonangol has drawn scrutiny into the legitimacy of her wealth. Dos Santos familial ties to the ruling party the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (mpla) by being the daughter of the president is widely regarded to be the key to her success. When asked about the role her father has played in her success, Dos Santos replied: “I think that Angola is merit driven. So what I have achieved there I think it has been through merit. I have also started working a very long time ago […] over two decades ago. The success that I have today is not something that came overnight, it is not something that came, over the last five years, it’s something that took two decades to build” (bbc 2015). Spring (2009) concluded that factors that can be attributed to women’s success as large-scale entrepreneurs depend on “entry requirements of capital, education, [and] networks.” Isabel Dos Santos’ emphasis on merit constructs her success as an example of entrepreneurial exceptionalism, whilst her social status afforded her the necessary factors to become the mogul she is today. For instance, Dos Santos has a degree in engineering from King’s College London, and such an education can easily be financed when one comes from a wealthy family. Critics of Dos Santos, such as Angolan activist Rafael Marques de Morais, often point to her enormous wealth in contrast to the weak development of Angola (De Morais 2015).

Whether private-sector led development has generated improvements in the lives of poor people in Angola remains up for debate. Angola ranks 149 out of 188 in the human development index (hdi Report 2015), and is often referred to as “the world’s richest poor country” (Power 2012). Efforts to incorporate the local population into the country’s economic growth have been made through legislation to ensure “Angolanização” (that is, local content in terms of labour force, and goods and services) within the key sectors of the economy (Ovadia 2012). In the same study, it was found that private companies often try to circumvent the policy by hiring expatriates to the international divisions of their companies, and that employed Angolans often are either white or of mixed background, thus indicating employment disparities along racial lines despite local content legislation (Ibid.: 406).

Folorunsho Alakija, Nigeria

Folorunsho Alakija is the 13th richest African, and Africa’s second richest woman, worth $1.7 billion, and now at age 65, according to Forbes’ 2016 listing. ¹⁰ Alakija follows Dos Santos on Forbes’ list of Africa’s wealthiest women. However, estimates made by Ventures Africa’s analysts indicate that the value of her combined assets are $7.3 billion. Their rationale is that the proposed sale of shares in oml 127 owned by Brazilian Petrobas for $1.5 – 2.5 billion, increases the value of Alakija’s 60 per cent ownership to $7.3 billion (Ventures Africa 2013). If these tentative estimates of her increased wealth are accurate, that would make her the richest woman in Africa as she would surpass Dos Santos. Nevertheless, Alakija is undoubtedly Nigeria’s richest woman.

Her career started as a secretary at International Merchant Bank (imb) Nigeria in the 1970s, not of her own volition, but because her father chose that as her career path ( cnn 2012). She rose through the ranks to the position of executive secretary, upwards to being the Head of Corporate Affairs at the bank, which was followed two years later by a position at the Financial Treasury Department. Although Alakija had been afforded the task to trade and invest with the Bank’s money, she nonetheless found herself surpassed by others when it came to further promotions, which made her quit the bank and start her own business.

In 1985 Alakija launched “Supreme Stitches” a fashion brand, which propelled her into success as a designer, and won a national award for Fashion Designer of the Year (Sambira 2015). Though her brand became a household name, it primarily catered to up-scale clientele. Alakija’s entry into fashion industry came after having studied fashion in the United Kingdom. This decision, she argues was because she did not want to merely employ people, she wanted to know the industry for herself in order to do it “professionally”, spurred by personal motivation and a commitment to excellence and success in all of her endeavours (cnn 2012). Her education overseas was easily facilitated since she already came from a wealthy family. One would argue that capital is not only important in order to invest into one’s business, but also to invest in acquiring the necessary know-how for the designated sector. Coming from the upper strata of society thus made her entry into the business world comparatively easier than had she come from a poorer background. Notwithstanding, it was her own observation of textile market trends in the mid-80s in Nigeria, with increasing interest in Nigerian designs, which propelled her to tap into the domestic fashion market. Therefore, it is imperative to juxtapose access to funding with entrepreneurial skill. Alakija’s wealthy background does not take away from the fact that she made wise business decisions; it merely provided the necessary foundations to start her career as an entrepreneur.

The success of Supreme Stitches provided Alakija with the capital and connections, which pushed her success even further. Access to funding and having personal connections to high profile leadership in Nigeria have been other key factors leading to her success. Joseph (1987) argued that Nigeria is a prebendal society, where upward mobility often is contingent on access to elites as “an individual procures […] as a reward for loyal service to a lord or ruler” (see also: Lewis 1996). In the case of Alakija, she herself attributed her entry into the oil business to Supreme Stitches as she in a cnn interview stated that it helped her gain access to a wide range of people, which later led to “a call from a friend”. Therein, she found out that “this friend of ours had business associates who wanted to purchase crude oil” leading her to apply for oil fields (cnn 2012). Alakija entered the oil industry in the 1990s during the rule of military president Ibrahim Babangida, an outcome of her personal connection to Babangida through his wife Maryam, as she was her tailor. In 1996 she signed a deal with Texaco (which later became Chevron) and founded Famfa oil. In October 2016, Alakija publicly alluded to how she got an oil block in 1993, but it took 15 years for her company to strike oil in commercial quantity. ¹¹ Her wealth has steadily grown since then and propelled her to the position as the fourth wealthiest person in Nigeria. Alakija recently sought to distance herself and her business from links to government when she asserted that the Obasanjo government frustrated the growth of her oil business in the heels of striking oil in commercial quantity. In the same public forum, this assertion was countered by former President Obasanjo (of Nigeria), where he stated “that Mrs Folorunsho Alakija, Africa’s richest woman by Forbes reckoning, was among the 25 billionaires he made during his tenure as President.” (See Daily Vanguard, 30 October 2016).

Micro-credit schemes were initially lauded as the panacea to lifting people out of poverty in the international development policy circles. However, this approach has some flaws as it is argued that the large numbers of women as loan-takers (Alakija’s indicator of success) does not necessarily mean that their lives have improved. Indeed, while there are women who do succeed to utilise micro-finance loans to start small-businesses, many women have fallen victim to high interest rates and seen their situations become worse than they were before the loan. Micro-credit schemes have had disastrous effects in South Africa, which serves as a warning to uncritically introduce micro-finance in other African countries (Bateman 2014a). Furthermore, a study found that “no clear evidence yet exists that microfinance programs have positive impacts” (Duvendack et al. 2011). Considering the negative impacts of micro-finance in other cases and the critique of the Grameen Bank model specifically (see Bateman 2014b), the likelihood of the RoSF’s initiative to diverge from that trend seems unlikely.

Based on interviews where Alakija speaks on women’s empowerment and her foundation, it is clear that she wants to portray an image as a facilitator of increased gender equality for women in Nigeria. However, as the abovementioned studies show, micro-credit can be a problematic means towards a good cause. Nonetheless, the corporate social responsibility programmes of Famfa Oil with their partner Agbami seem more beneficial. For instance, the Agbami Social Investments Programme offers scholarships for Nigerian undergraduate students in the field of Medicine and Engineering. ¹⁴ Secondary education has been found to be one key difference between female informal business owners and formal larger-scale business owners, where the latter in most cases have tertiary education as well (Spring 2009). A uneca study (2007) study found that most women large-scale entrepreneurs had strong educational backgrounds within the science disciplines, and maths in particular.

The third case in this study, Dr. Theresa Oppong Beeko from Ghana is a prime example of the importance of education in order to develop the necessary knowledge in succeeding as a large-scale entrepreneur.

Dr. Theresa Oppong-Beeko, Ghana

Ghana’s wealthiest 80 individuals and families have a combined fortune of $29.3 billion, representing some 6.4 per cent of the nation’s gdp, providing direct employment to over 150,000 Ghanaians. In this list of Ghana’s wealthy people are three male billionaires – who together account for a total wealth of $3.96 billion – and five women multimillionaires who control a total of $1.62 billion. These women include Gifty Lamptey (4th richest Ghanaian woman and 69th richest Ghanaian), who with a net worth of $135 million is the largest individual shareholder in sidalco, one of West Africa’s largest fertiliser distributors. Another is Kate Quartey-Papafio (third richest Ghanaian woman and 48th richest Ghanaian) net worth $250 Million, who is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Reroy Cables Limited one of the leading manufacturers of electrical cables and telecom cables and conductors in Ghana, with significant links to the international market, exporting mostly to countries in the Economic Community of West African States. There is Theresa Oppong-Beeko (second richest Ghanaian woman and 24th richest Ghanaian), worth $420 Million, who is into Real estate under the umbrella of Manet Group (owns commercial office properties, over 2,000 apartments, a 48-room niche hotel, as well as the Manet Towers at Airport City in Accra). Patricia Poku-Diaby is Ghana’s richest woman, and 8th richest Ghanaian, owning three quarters of a billion dollars. She was initially into management of her family’s business (trading and transportation), after which she established Plot Enterprise Group in Côte d’Ivoire which includes Plot Commodities (deals in cotton and cocoa, registered with the Dubai Metal and Commodities Centre in Dubai and the Cocoa Merchants Association of America), Plot Enterprise in Côte d’Ivoire (trading of cocoa, cashew nut and wood products) and Plot Enterprise Ghana (a cocoa processing company). ¹⁵

Female entrepreneurs in Ghana’s rich list appear to be in businesses that have a minimal link to government patronage. This is a large departure from the government corruption-to-wealth explanations largely ascribed to sources of wealth of some very rich Africans. Dr. Theresa Oppong-Beeko is the founder and chief executive officer of Manet Group Incorporated, and one of the richest and most influential women in Ghana. Although her wealth ranks behind that of Dos Santos and Alakija, a part of the lower rungs of Oppong-Beeko’s ladder to wealth has to some extent been attributed to unexplained connections with high profile political leadership. It is documented that after completing her first degree in humanities she started her first business venture in fishing at the age of 25, which ended with her having a debt equivalent to $2.5 million at such a young age. ¹⁶ Interestingly, this remains the glaringly unexplained part of her trajectory to wealth. All documentary sources allude to this debt, yet, none proffered explanation on the source of this big loan, the concessions she might have had in repayment or debt forgiveness when the investment in fish business went sour, and whether it was eventually repaid, at what rate of interest (which is generally documented as astronomically high in Ghana). It begs the question whether a gap in banking regulation was utilised; or, did she receive some sort of support from government at high levels just at a time when Ghana was emerging from tough economic doldrums in the 80s? These questions remain unanswered, which in a way puts her foundation wealth in the category of the kinds of probable political links that Alakija and Dos Santos benefitted from. Hence the choice of the second wealthiest female in Ghana for analyses in this chapter.

Oppong-Beeko holds a Bachelor of Arts Honours Degree in Sociology and Political Science and a Master’s degree in Business Administration (Marketing) both from the University of Ghana, Legon. No public documentation exists about her connections to high profile political leadership but her trajectory to prosperity warrants an examination of how she has managed to succeed in the backdrop of the fact that she decided to return to the University of Ghana at Legon to acquire a Master’s degree in Business Administration (where she was declared Best Marketing Student in 1990) following the failed $2.5 million business venture. After graduation she established Manet Housing Limited in 1994, pursuing her dream of entering the constructing market. In the wider sense, Manet Construction Limited is primarily a civil engineering company that has specialised in the construction of urban roads and other related infrastructure such as drains, culverts, and high-rise edifice around the nation’s capital, Accra.

In 1998, Theresa Oppong Beeko further established Manet Hotels Limited, located as a beach Resort at Ada (east of Accra, towards the Volta Region), which was developed into a three-star 48-room hotel that caters niche tourism of Aqua sport and marlin fishing. This would metamorphose into Manet Paradise and Beach resort. The Manet Group comprises Manet Housing (real estate development firm), Manet Beach Paradise (a three star Hotel Resort), Manet Construction Limited (a Civil Engineering Company) and Manet Towers Limited (to provide and manage office accommodation, signified in the Twin Tower office edifice at the Airport City in Accra, Ghana). The Manet Group also includes the Manet Cottage annex, the Manet Gardens and the Manet Ville. In the backdrop of being the second largest Real Estate Development Company in Ghana’s construction sector, a lot of accolades have been bestowed on Theresa Oppong-Beeko, notable among these are: Manet’s recognition for the Overall property award for 2012 at the 5th Ghana Property Awards; Theresa Oppong-Beeko in 2013 as Africa’s most influential woman in business and government (overall winner for Africa in the industries category); recognition as a philanthropist for being the Highest Individual Donor to the society, in July 2004, by the Ghana Society for The Blind’s Golden Jubilee Celebrations (1951–2001); an exemplary realtor, accorded as Property Personality of the Year (2007) and the Gold Star Award for Exemplary Leadership in provision of shelter for low income earners in West Africa; Property Personality of the Year 2010 (Ghana Property Express); Ghana’s Indigenous Woman Entrepreneur of the Year (2010).

The housing construction industry in Ghana has been described as notoriously tricky to finance, and compounded by gender barriers in a still male-dominated business. She famously publicly refused to be drawn into oil exploration or crude oil drilling license business by declaring her comfort zone remains the building sector, particularly by saying “I’m into accommodation and I will be there to provide it,” through extensive local knowledge and understanding of Ghana’s market’s needs and staying sensitive to the demands of the Ghanaian population for real estate development and the hospitality industry in Ghana. Oppong-Beeko does not rule out international expansion of her business as she declared: “I cannot fully predict the effects the Manet Group will have on the Ghanaian economy but I am certain, nonetheless, that we will extend the scope of our business well beyond the borders of Ghana.”

Recently obtained data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitoring (gem) survey in Ghana show relatively high levels of entrepreneurial activities among women compared to their male counterparts—a condition which is an exception across all the gem countries. Within the context of limited employment and other opportunities in the labour market, the development of entrepreneurial activity is seen as playing a key role in Ghana’s economic growth (Quartey et al. 2014). But female-controlled businesses in Ghana often tend to be micro and small enterprises (mses) largely concentrated in the informal sector. Societal views on culture, religion, and childcare, and levels of education and development have serious implications for attitudes and opinions that weigh heavily against women entering the business world. Despite these challenges, the 2010 gem survey revealed that in Ghana, women are more entrepreneurial than men. Entrepreneurship is to an extent a preferred career path for women as it is seen to have the potential to offer flexibility and independence that typical employment does not (Dzisi 2008). Despite women’s dominance in entrepreneurial activities in Ghana, women still face significant obstacles. In addition, the challenges of men and women’s entrepreneurship in Ghana cannot be separated from those of the informal sector in particular and the private sector development in general. Consequently, the policy response needs not to narrowly focus on promoting female entrepreneurship but to broadly resolve the constraints affecting the informal sector or entrepreneurship in general.

Conclusion

There is a lot of literature on entrepreneurship, but little is known about the forms and characteristics of female entrepreneurship in transition economies in general or African countries in particular. This study has attempted to fill this gap. All three women discussed in this chapter have undoubtedly been successful in their respective business ventures. However, their life stories show that their success as women entrepreneurs should not be framed as entrepreneurial exceptionalism, as none of them went from rags-to-riches (although very little is known about the background of Oppong-Beeko). The privilege, which facilitated these women’s success can be seen as an unfair advantage to some, but is a valuable insight that confirms what other studies have shown; namely, in order for women to succeed as entrepreneurs, they need access to funding, education and networks. Indeed, given the comparative privileges that all three women had in comparison to women coming from lower strata of society, one may arguably conclude that Spring’s (2009) argument is valid that women who own formal sector businesses should be considered “mainstream business people” and that the category of “women entrepreneurs” is rather misleading because the women possess the same agency (if not more, as in the case of Dos Santos) as male counterparts.

The cases presented in this chapter confirm how crucial the initial social statuses of these three women have been to their success. Isabel Dos Santos had access to solid education, networks and funding. But it is argued that Dos Santos’ benefitting from access to ownership of Angolan parastatals that were privatised, alongside having connections to major investors (such as Portugal’s richest man, Américo Amorim) has been crucial in Dos Santos business gave her the necessary leverage for success in business. Alakija’s path to her current wealth was laid out by her establishment of Supreme Stiches, which later gave her the necessary connections for procurement of oil licenses. She publicly denied having privileges from “government of the day”; but rebuttal given by former President Obasanjo strongly pointed to her being one of the highly favoured by government. How this favour was given and how it became a catalyst for Alakija’s appearance on Forbes list. ¹⁷ In Theresa Oppong-Beeko’s case, there is no clear answer as to what kinds of political favours she received when she laid the foundation blocks of her businesses. However, one may hypothesise that she has had influential backing considering the business climate during which she first got indebted to the tune of millions of dollars and came out unscathed unlike other individuals at the time. One thing that remain clear is that the growth of the three women’s businesses and personal wealth has been sustained. As a potential force for economic growth, women entrepreneurs in large-scale sector are nonetheless a pioneering community, increasingly well-educated and well primed for their role as entrepreneurs, as they continue to demonstrate excellent results and growth prospects.