The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), in its new report, themed: ‘Financing Women’s Digital Entrepreneurship: A Pathway to Closing Africa’s Economic Gender Gap’ has revealed that women’s economic participation in Africa has fallen 0.6 percentage points below 2022 levels, extending the region’s timeline to reach economic parity from 120 years to approximately 170 years.
The report draws on BCG’s Africa Women’s Voices Survey 2025, which surveyed around 3,000 women and men across six major African economies – South Africa, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Morocco and Egypt – alongside data from the WEF Global Gender Gap Report 2025 and Africa’s startup funding landscape.
According to the report, Africa’s post-COVID economic recovery has been slow and uneven. Between 2021 and 2024, GDP per capita on the continent grew at just 1.2 per cent annually, less than half the global average of 2.5 per cent. With 70 per cent of women concentrated in vulnerable, informal employment, they have disproportionately borne the brunt of this regression.
The survey findings paint a troubling picture beyond the economic data, adding that since 2023, attitudes toward gender equality have deteriorated across the region, and not only among men. Women themselves are now less likely to support equal pay, financial autonomy and equal access to education, pointing to a deepening of internalised discrimination.
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Analysing the report, Managing Director and Partner at BCG and Global Lead for Gender Equality and Women Empowerment, Zineb Sqalli, said: “What makes this data particularly concerning is that the regression is not limited to structural barriers. When we see women, themselves becoming less likely to advocate for their own economic rights, it signals how deeply these setbacks are being felt at a social level. The window for intervention is narrowing.”
According to the BCG survey, 66 per cent of women across the six countries aspire to run their own business, with that figure exceeding 80 per cent in both Nigeria and Kenya. One in five women surveyed already runs an online business and two-thirds are considering starting one; outpacing men in digital business ambition.
