Emergent Challenges Facing Women Entrepreneurs in Lusaka City, Zambia

Women entrepreneurs play an important role in the socio-economic development of the world, in general, and of Lusaka city, in particular. However, their contribution to socio-economic development, through job creation and other vehicles, is hampered by a host of challenges. The study aimed to establish emergent challenges that hinder women entrepreneurs in Lusaka city, Zambia, from attaining their entrepreneurial objectives. The study was anchored by Raewyn Connell's Patriarchal Dividend/Theory of Masculinity. The qualitative study adopted a descriptive survey research design and it employed a convenience sampling method in drawing a sample of 385 women participants. Data were collected using a survey questionnaire. Microsoft Excel, content analysis, and SPSS version 26 descriptive statistics were used to analyze data. The study established that women entrepreneurs from Lusaka city face many emergent challenges, chief among them were poor financial and economic performance; marketing, supply, and distribution related challenges; Covid-19 related challenges; expensive stock, implements, and other materials; and lack of equipment, and infrastructure. If these challenges are not addressed by relevant stakeholders, women entrepreneurs shall continue to struggle to achieve their business objectives. Consequently, some of them shall close their businesses. This has the potential to worsen the socioeconomic challenges that Zambia faces and would want to lessen them quickly. Therefore, the study recommends that firstly, the Government of the Republic of Zambia (GRZ) and other relevant stakeholders should collaborate to ease access to finance to women entrepreneurs. Secondly, GRZ and other relevant stakeholders should collaborate to provide relevant entrepreneurship training to women entrepreneurs. Lastly, women entrepreneurs should purposely work together for their own good.