Young women entrepreneurs closing the gender digital gap through digital marketing

Young Liberian women are eager to go into small scale business ventures as a means of self-empowerment and development. Some of the women see business as a dream while others pursue it as a call to action. However, the lack of an encouraging business environment, difficulty in accessing loans, and limited digital empowerment for young enterprising women have reportedly been major obstacles. 

In support of emerging Liberia businesses, a UN Working Group of Experts on Business and Human Rights that visited the country in November 2022 called on the Government to help improve the business climate and alleviate the poor labour conditions across different sectors and in areas of concessions among other initiatives to improve businesses.

To assist young women venturing into startups, UN Women Liberia supports the use of social media for business.  The innovation encourages young women to use their phones, internet, and network to advertise and market their products. 

UN Women is working in collaboration with Orange Foundation to provide digital training services to young women and girls to bridge the technology gap between men and women by increasing young women’s access to modern technology and by supporting their empowerment through education and employment. The training is mainly earmarked for people who are 18 years and above; high school graduates; or people with intermediate skills in the use of social media.

Zaza Mulbah, a Senior Manager at Orange Digital Center Liberia, believes that UN Women and Orange Foundation digital empowerment is the beginning of important things to come for young women. “We kickstarted training in digital marketing, financial technology, e-commerce, and e-business for 35 young women who were already into business so that we could assist them to increase their income. Instead of using social media for show-making the trainees were taught to use the platform to earn money and attain better standards of living,” said Mr. Mulbah. Training was done in three phases from June to October 2022. 

Vicky Neufville was among 35 young women who completed the digital training offered by UN Women and Orange Digital Center. She appreciated the training because, she was exposed to the use of technology which is critical in today’s world and valuable to her as a young person. Ms. Nuefville is now using her social media platform to support herself, and she is looking forward to seeing her entity grow and to help others grow as well. 

For Hannah Kettor, another beneficiary of the training, her life has now changed for the better since she completed her digital e-business training in 2022. Her sales have gone up and will soon end the face-to-face selling and focus on social media marketing. 

“I heard that I could sell more goods on Facebook, but I did not know how to do it. I had nobody to teach me until I enrolled into the digital training program,” said Ms. Kettor. Her main line of business is in selling dry goods like rice, oil, beans. Her business name is, ‘Hit the Web.’

The digital training focused on how to use social media to boost income-generation, leverage online mobile technology to access financial services, and use e-commerce as a tool for buying and selling.

As we celebrate International Women’s Day and the women’s month on the global theme, “DigitALL: Innovation and Technology for Gender Equality”, and the national theme, “Innovating with Technology to Promote Gender Equality,” we celebrate young women and girls who are empowering themselves through the use of digital innovations and technology.