Naomi Nyengai’s business began on a wheelbarrow. Now, she’s ready to scale. If only the system would let her
For a woman running a business in Kakuma, Naomi Nyengai has no illusions about the challenges women entrepreneurs face worldwide.
“Women in business navigate a maze of invisible barriers,” she said, reflecting on how she has spent the past decade working to break them.
The 49-year-old started with a wheelbarrow of avocados in Kakuma, a town with the largest refugee settlement in East Africa where more than 250,000 people living in the harsh, unforgiving heat. Here, avocados and much of fresh fruit and vegetables are rare; hard to find, expensive when available. She saw a gap, filled it, and pushed forward, quite literally at first, her business rolling through the dusty streets on the single wheel of her cart. Then, customers started asking for more. Bananas one day, onions the next, sometimes rice. Naomi zeroed in on an opportunity.
But the path from survival to success has been anything but easy. Women in Kakuma (and across much of the world) face an uphill battle in business. More than 90% of working women in Africa are employed in the informal sector, where access to capital and resources is limited. Many, like Naomi, start small, navigating unreliable supply chains and inconsistent demand. Sourcing products was a constant struggle. Some days, she had nothing to sell. Other days, she had goods but no customers with enough money to buy them.
She remembers the days she had to choose between running her business and caring for her child.
“I didn’t have money to employ people,” Naomi explained. “So, I would go up the truck that brought in fresh produce on market days myself, tying my box with a rope and rolling it down, knowing that some of the avocados would go bad. I incurred losses, but I kept going.”
Her story is not unique. Despite women owning approximately one-third of businesses globally, they secure only about 1% of procurement contracts from large corporations and governments. This explains why women remain underrepresented in the global economy, facing structural barriers that limit their full participation. Naomi, like many others, had no choice but to build her own supply chain from scratch.
The Loan That Changed Her Perspective
In many African communities, legal ownership of assets is often restricted to men, leaving women without the collateral needed to secure financing. For Naomi, this meant that when she tried to expand her business, she hit the same roadblock as millions of women across the continent: no collateral, no capital.
“Institutions ask for collateral, but where do I get it? Who wants to give money to someone with no assets?” It’s a question asked by millions of female entrepreneurs globally, who face a $1.7 trillion credit gap. In developing countries, women-owned small and medium enterprises (WSMEs) are underrepresented at all levels of the financial system. Additionally, women are 20% less likely than men to have a bank account and 22% less likely to access formal credit.
Inkomoko stepped in when Naomi was at a crossroads. Understandably, the entrepreneur was skeptical at first. Not afraid to speak her mind, “I told them, ‘Why are you teaching me? Teach me when I have money!’. Inkomoko staff responded: ‘Get knowledge so that when you get money, you know how to spend it.’” So she showed up to every business training session. “Even when you don’t have food, you go and learn,” Naomi quipped.
Through these sessions, she learned how to manage her finances, track inventory, and plan for expansion. She took out her first loan—80,000 shillings—and repaid it in three months. Now, she wants to break past the one million shilling limit. “I want to grow. I want to buy my own truck instead of paying 5,000 a day to rent one,” she said. “The men with trucks take advantage of us. If I had my own, I could bring in my goods directly.”
Again, the struggle for financial access is not just Naomi’s problem. When women do secure funding, they reinvest up to 90% of their income back into their families and communities, compared to 30-40% for men.
Accelerating Action for Women Entrepreneurs
So yes, the potential is there. The system just needs to catch up. She is not the only one proving what’s possible. In the last five years, Inkomoko has supported 7,492 women-led businesses in Kakuma. Since then, women’s business revenue has grown by 35%, improving household expenses by 42%.
These numbers tell a simple story: when women have access to capital, they grow. And when they grow, communities benefit. But for every Naomi who finds a way, thousands more are held back by financial barriers that don’t reflect their potential.
At the current rate of change, it will take 286 years to close the gender gap in legal protections for women.
Women like Naomi do not have 286 years to wait.
Closing the gender gap in entrepreneurship could add up to $10 trillion to the global economy. Investing in women means investing in economies. But first, we need to accelerate action.
Naomi couldn’t have said it better: “We are many women in business, but we are stagnating because of collateral requirements. Remove that limit and see where I will go. I will fly.”
