Will Bain

and that is having a detrimental impact on whole economies and efforts to lift communities out of poverty.

In fact, sub-Saharan Africa is the only region in the world where women make up the majority of those who are entrepreneurs.

However, according to the bank...

A range of impediments render women's businesses less productive, with fewer employees than those owned by men.

So today, we're going to try and work through what those are and try and work out what might shift that picture.

And to do that, we've gathered a panel of entrepreneurs from across sub-Saharan Africa.

Mary Niambura is the founder and chief executive of Echo Charge, based in Kasaju, Kenya.

Angela Nawateme joined us from the Ugandan capital, Kampala.

And Safa Tusek, based in Dakar, Senegal, is the founder of the fashion brand Soraya.

Before we dived into that issue of accessing vital investment to try and grow, we asked just how did you come up with a business idea in the first place?

Starting with the Ugandan entrepreneur, Angela Nawatemi.

Mary, where did it come from for you, the kind of germ of an idea?

Was it a kind of light bulb, a click of the fingers moment for you too?

Or was there exactly as Angela was just saying, was there you were doing something already and you suddenly thought, I can build on this?

Yeah.

Just tell us a little bit about how it works.

And Safa too, what about for you?

What about that moment where you knew you wanted to do something for yourself?

Because that's quite a big thing, isn't it?

Not working for someone else, working for yourself.