The Constraints Facing Women Micro -Entrepreneurs in Luanda

Women in developing countries are affected significantly by poverty. This is evident from the increasing number of women headed households in developing countries. In Botswana, according to the CSO (2004: 6), 46.4 percent of households are headed by women. In Cambodia 25.6 percent of households are headed by women (Statistics Bureau, 2008: 5). The UNDP (2005a: 7) referred to this phenomenon as the feminisation of poverty. In Angola, a country engulfed in a vicious civil war spanning three decades, the situation is even worse. Women, who were forced to flee to urban areas to escape rural instability, soon faced poverty in the urban areas. These women resorted to self-employment as a means to earn income and pull themselves out of poverty (Von Itter, 2003: 4). Today, most of these women own and operate micro- enterprises in the informal sector (De Vletter, 2002: 21).
The informal nature of these enterprises hinders their easy access to financial support or credit schemes that could finance their expansion. As such, the Angolan government and NGOs such as the Development Workshop Angola (DWA) have adopted a bottom-up approach of micro-credit to assist the poor micro-entrepreneurs who face financial constraints (Cain, 2007: 374).