Yasmin Belo-Osagie: Women business leaders in Africa

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Yasmin Belo-OsagieShe Leads Africa’s Yasmin Belo-Osagie discusses the growth of African female entrepreneurs in Africa.

According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rate of female entrepreneurship in the world.

As of 2012, 27% of women were taking part in entrepreneurial activity. Now, industry leaders around the world are helping to fuel this momentum.

Yasmin Belo-Osagie is the co-founder of She Leads Africa, a social enterprise that supports the growth of African female entrepreneurs. The group provides women with career and business resources to foster a community of ambitious tech leaders.

They focus on women with mentoring as the key component. They give the entrepreneurs access to experts in the field via Twitter Chats and Google Hangouts and allow them to book one-on-one sessions with various business coaches.

“We also really wanted to focus on younger women. Women in that 18-35 age range. We wanted to create an organization that spoke to them and spoke like them,” said Yasmin Belo-Osagie.

Yasmin Belo-Osagie: Women Business Leaders in Africa

She Leads Africa's Yasmin Belo-Osagie describes what her organization is doing to help young female entrepreneurs in Africa.

A former management consultant, Yasmin and her team are working to show the world the innovative spirit of Africa’s brightest women. They see themselves in the unique position of empowering the women who are pioneering entrepreneurship in Africa to create an ecosystem that that doesn’t repeat the mistakes of gender inequality in the West.

“For us so much of our growth is still to come. So instead of saying ‘Let’s grow and then try to correct this gender issue,’ we should be thinking about how do we get it right from the very beginning?” Belo-Osagie said.

Yasmin Belo-Osagie joined May Lee from Boston, Massachusetts to discuss the cultural and business challenges faced by female entrepreneurs in the developing world.