Shortly after Ghana Independence Day, which is celebrated on March 6, International Women's Day is celebrated today in Ghana as in the rest of the world. EWIA congratulates all women worldwide!
What would EWIA be without women? The more women work, the better; we believe that. Society as a whole benefits from empowered and independent women, be it in Germany, Ghana or anywhere else in the world. And we at EWIA benefit greatly from the perspectives of our female team members, who currently make up 54% of the workforce.
May we take this opportunity to introduce you to four of our female employees? Here come Afefa, Jennifer, Jomami and Peace.
UN sustainability goals are guidelines for EWIA
We don't just want to create jobs for Africa in a sustainable industry. The importance of female employment is of particular concern to us.
The United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal 5 (SDG 5) focuses on gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls. Education is the key to development everywhere on the planet and that is why we train all our employees in line with SDG 4. For example, we support Afefa studying mechanical engineering at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in parallel to her job with us, with a focus on renewable energies (you can find out more about Afefa here).
The woman in Ghana: Very independent
Of course, there is always more that can be done, but overall women in Ghana are quite well off. Ghana's constitution guarantees equality of the sexes. The social status of women in Ghana is very high and their self-confidence is correspondingly high. The proportion of women who are self-employed and set up companies is higher than in Germany, for example.
Especially in rural areas, women are becoming self-employed and raising children at the same time, which means that their incomes are lower than in the lucrative formal sector, for example, according to the World Bank. The big gap in development is actually not so much between the sexes, but between urban and rural areas, for example.
In 2021, the Mastercard Index of Women Entrepreneurs (MIWE) ranked Botswana (38.5%), Uganda (38.4%) and Ghana (37.2%) as the countries with the most female entrepreneurs worldwide for the third time in a row. We recently introduced you to one of these strong female founders, Valery Labi, head of the Ghanaian e-bike producer Wahu!
Empower Women in Africa
In other words: a lot has already happened, but like everywhere else in the world, there is still room for improvement and a lot to do. As a company, we are very happy to take our responsibility seriously and support women in Africa as much as we can.
EWIA stands for "Enable Wealth in Africa" every day of the year. On today's International Women's Day, however, it also stands for "Empower Women in Africa".
A big thank you to all the women in the world and to our female employees in particular, without whom we would not be able to function as a company. They hold the place together!