Corporate social responsibility  •  Partners  •  The Chamber

NEW PARTNER: FSACCI partners up with the Graça Michel Trust, Women Creating Wealth Programme!

FSACCI is now a proud partner of the Graça Michel Trust, Women Creating Wealth Programme!

Not only will we have a fantastic cohort of women leaders and entrepreneurs joining the network but we look forward to providing a platform for these women to expand their networks, engage in information & expertise sharing and help realise their business specific needs as Africa’s (current) success stories. 

If you would like to learn more about the programme or to support, please contact Amy Ashworth here. 

The Graça Machel Trust (GMT) Women Creating Wealth (WCW) programme is designed to strengthen the business acumen of African female entrepreneurs; transform women’s mindsets and businesses from income generation to wealth. To enable this, WCW aims to address barriers women entrepreneurs face in growing their enterprises, which include the following:

• Women-owned businesses are small, or survivalist focused, uncompetitive and not well prepared to access finance and markets thus affecting their ability to scale
• Low self-confidence, limited growth mindset and constrained capacity to grow
• Dearth of business management skills, information and networks
• Time and capacity constraints due to multiple domestic and professional obligations 
• Traditional gender biases which limit access to resources and assets  
• Legal and regulatory barriers that undermine the entrepreneurs

To address these barriers and others, the WCW programme provides training workshops to strengthen women’s confidence, entrepreneurial and leadership competencies and networks as the foundation for growth. It also provides masterclasses in market development, business linkages, financial management, compliance, performance monitoring and investment readiness. A key part of the programme is peer coaching and mentoring to tap into their collective wisdom, experience, creativity and networks as entrepreneurs.

A major reason stated by the South African cohort of entrepreneurs for applying to the WCW programme is also be part of the Graça Machel Trust pan-African network which is an important opportunity to promote and advance intra-Africa trade. GMT has networks of over 50 0000 women across sectors such as finance, business, agribusiness, and media in 17 African countries - West, East, South and North Africa. The WCW programme began in Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia and in 2020 we replicated it in South Africa; with 100 entrepreneurs in each country. We aim to connect the 4 countries in 2021 to unleash their power and potential to trade. 

The primary sponsor and partner of the programme to date is Virgin Unite. The Graca Machel Trust is looking for more partnerships to scale the programme to 10 000 across the African continent and is pleased to partner with the French South African Chamber of Commerce (FSACCI).