Audrey Kawuki is Assistant professor at the Makerere University Business School. She is a trainer of the Access! program as well as leadership development trainer and developer of Leadership trainer curriculums.
Audrey admonished people to do their research. She described export is just another business, where the buyers are out of the country. When you are doing research in that area you have to look at the entrepreneurial roles and the challenges in that area.
What are these challenges? Whether you are professional, you have a family, children, we are kind we want to support people in the village and we have to juggle these challenges all the time. In one of the research papers she published in 1999 she found that women had 7 major roles and found these roles affected their performance. While our male colleagues go for a drink after work, the women are rushing home to the children, to cook for the husband who is out networking. Most of the deals are done in the bars. And when your fellow colleagues see you out they ask you "What are you doing out at this time of day?” We hinder growth among ourselves.
When you invite people for trainings they don’t turn up. They say it is because they “don’t have the time”. How are you going to get on the export market if you don’t know what is there? So that is what we have to do on the export market: go for trainings, develop knowledge. Read a book, at least a page. How many of you are reading a business related book at the moment? As women you should have a book that you are reading. Take the time to read a book. If you are reading three or four pages every year, that is equivalent to four books a day. You are a person who is in business and you have read four books in a year, there is no way that someone who does not read books can compete. There is no way you can compete with each other. And if you are going into the export market there is no excuse for that.
Audrey noted in her research that women’s don’t even know simple things that are happening and they are over the news every day. When you hear about China on the news listen attentively, it affects you. When you hear about the dollar don’t say “I don’t understand that.” It affects you. When you are going into the export market it will affect you.
Finances.
People always say women don’t have access to finances. But women also don’t use the possibilities that exist. Claim they don’t have enough finances, but I advocate for entrepreneurial behaviours. If you have entrepreneurial behaviours you can be successful. Make sure you have relevant networks. Don’t have friends for the sake of it. Have friends that are useful, that add value to you. If you are in business, have friends that are in business. Your minds work the same way as theirs, you can help each other to find solutions to challenges. And as women, don’t give up easily in business.
Listen to Mrs Mbeke admonish women to make radio programs and Dorothy Tuma lament that women are not writing for the papers enough. Their message: let other people know what you know. It is valuable.
