Maureen Erekua Odoi

Maureen Erekua Odoi – or Mimi as she’s fondly known is the Co-founding Director/Executive Director of African Aurora Business Network (AABN), Innovation Center for Women, Agribusiness & Management based in Ghana. She leads a team of Certified Business Advisors as a Certified ILO Master Trainer and Business Advisor and manages a business network with 10,000 members nationwide.

Growing up, her family’s wellbeing and wealth was dependent on the agrarian economy, largely the cocoa value chain. Cocoa is a major contributor to Ghana’s GDP and the country is the world's second largest producer and exporter .

A naturally curious individual, she has had a remarkable 20 year career which started in the business development sector, more specifically in Agri business with a focus on women and youth development. She has engaged and worked with over 10 000 young people and women over the years and maintains that she remains curious because the reality on the ground contradicts the desirable state.

Maureen is driven by a burning question which interrogates whether Africa is missing the mark. She asks of herself and others whether we are we hopeful or frustrated, are our policies, projects, programs delivering results or do we lack the human capacity to deliver sustainable results given the resources we have? Is it a resource issue, or is it a market issue that’s leaving the youth and women out of an almost three trillion dollar market economy?

Maureen does not idle in the realm of idealistic enquiry and translates query to research and practice. In her words, it was obvious 20 years ago that there was a clear gap in the marketplace, where people were coming out of school at a speed of light, Africa was developing, Ghana was developing, and opportunities to be employed were getting smaller and smaller meaning that the window of opportunity to be employed by the government was shrinking.

A team of development practitioners came together and co-founded African Aurora Business Network (AABN) with a vision to provide hope for businesses in Africa with a focus on young people, specifically locals and in particular women. The interest in women was based on their research which identified that this group were clearly out of the picture and where they were participating did so mainly in the informal sector. The focus on youth was as a counter proposition to a prevailing interest in formal employment in the public sector. AABN’s lens on Agri-business was strategic foresight identifying that this sector was left to old and ageing actors despite its significance in economic activity and revenue opportunity. AABN’s mission was to encourage young people to look at opportunity differently, with a focus on young women to start their own businesses when they finished school.

The disconnect between opportunity, low hanging fruit and traditional reference points for work and income were the first challenge. Early days of AABN were like a crusade mission with the role of AABN being to simplify processes, provide skills and promote awareness and education to young people, and to connect them to investors who were offering their support. Maureen recollects this period as both fun and challenging as at the timenvery few people recognised that there were resources available for starting and growing business.

AABN’s first project involved it going to all the polytechnics to identify 50 top young people who had business ideas. This evolved into project after project, to the point where AABN offered a range of business development services from business planning to market research to training workshops. Today the organisation specializes in business planning with young people. AABN developed games, tools, processes, which are simplified and convenient, for young people to appreciate what it takes to start a business, to plan it, to grow it and then to scale it.

Over the years Maureen and her team have advocated for businesses development services for more young people and for women particularly and offer a range of services and developmental services, influencing policies through discourse and contributing to policy development and country strategies. Maureen serves on various private sector boards, supports and works with the leadership of key business associations – the Association of Commerce, the Ghana Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and has played an executive role in the birthing of women in business under the AGI umbrella and the Credit Union under the Ghana National Chamber of Commerce and Industry, amongst many other achievements. Doing business has been more than just running a business, her role and mission includes facilitating an enabling environment for other businesses to succeed.

An author, Maureen launched her first book earlier this year titled “The 12 Golden Secrets for Entrepreneurs, Keys to Business and Wealth”, a compendium of case studies (pleasantly including women owned enterprises) and experiences of African local and global business. Even with this publication, the advocate for changing the game and levelling the playing field emerges with Maureen being clear that her mission is to make the book available to 1 million entrepreneurs – seeing the book as providing access to knowledge and insights from those who have already travelled the path before.

Maureen Erekua Odoi is a Womanomics Africa ™ Country Ambassador – Ghana.

Executive Reflections August 2021

From the desk of Rehema and Lebo

Welcome to the first edition of The Womanomics Times.

The last 19 months commencing January 2020 have been largely described as uncertain, tumultuous, worrying and more recently, exhausting, daunting with pockets of hope – as the Covid19 pandemic wreaks havoc across the globe. In South Africa, August 2021 represents 16 months of varying levels of hard and adjusted lockdowns, limiting movement of people and business operations with the aim of reducing infections. Not surprisingly this curtailing of critical aspects of trade locally has had adverse effects evidenced by what economic data reveals of business closures, increased unemployment rates and a slowdown of economic activity.

What the pandemic further revealed with brutal honesty, is that while we exist in a global village – the rules of engagement are not Ubuntu driven and certainly do not put Africa first. Why should they? Years after independence, we as residents and architects of African economies remain highly dependant on global value chains and have not spent sufficient time developing African ecosystems that are globally competitive, Africa sensitive, resilient and sustainable. The Africa Continental Free Trade Area which came into effect earlier this year initiates in circumstances which challenge the theoretical premise of unity and collaboration, questioning a utopic promise in the guise of yet another Secretariat with a head office. Prevailing geo-political boundaries, beauracratic practices, local agendas and legislative frameworks that limit movement of people, goods and money as well as poor adoption of enabling technologies to bridge the gap, do not build confidence to truly leverage what has been promoted as Africa’s economic stimulus option.

There is a need to do away with the political posturing and paper-pushing and to get on with the realities of on the ground business to business collaboration. During the pandemic, at a time of a health crisis and with an opportunity to expedite the agenda for African collaboration, news reports of self funded African centres of excellence of production and manufacturing (which are some of the key switches to turn on) were glaringly absent. Ask citizens where to find PPE and an Asian source is a likely response. We certainly did well to cement Asia -Africa value chains and networks. During an education slowdown in some countries a leverage of African grown online academic options were muted by the number of global partners offering online courses for free, while the issue of access to education by a continent that is home to the worlds largest youth base remains a topic of discussion and sadly not a reflection of success. The African response has been arguably insular, local and protectionist. If crisis does not spark opportunity for increased engagement, expedited bureaucratic easing, regulatory reform, and facilitated aggregation – what will it take – or rather do we have what it takes?

The world is moving on. The last few months of vaccine rollouts globally have seen the world opening up to movement and trade, while new economic alliances have been forged and will be strengthened. What does inclusion, access and participation in a recalibrated world economy look like? For African women in business, empirical evidence of the impact of historic exclusion of women in economic strategies is telling. In an era of post-pandemic resetting, it is imperative that a post covid response firmly addresses the lagging gender agenda.

The Womanomics Africa™ response to addressing the gender gap has been to leverage technology as an enabler. Womanomics Africa ™ launched its Virtual Campus in June 2021, proudly and aptly hosting the UN Women and the Generation Equality Forum geared at accelerating gender equality by 2026. The Virtual Campus which delivers both a 2D and 3D experience is a world first, leveraging gaming technology and conferencing principles to connect and facilitate access by women to insights, capacity building, opportunities and a community of ecosystem partners unlocking the possibilities inherent in African owned businesses doing more intra Africa trade.

We invite you to join our Campus community, access Womanomics Africa™ and partner experiences as well as engagements.

To the women of South Africa - we wish you a Happy Women's Month!