As part of its commitment to advancing financial inclusion, Mastercard has launched this report across its Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa (EEMEA) region, including Egypt. The initiative is designed to champion women entrepreneurs, provide key business insights and drive tangible solutions to break down systemic barriers.

“Our research highlights the remarkable entrepreneurial spirit among women across the EEMEA region. While progress has been made, challenges remain, reinforcing the need for stronger support. At Mastercard, we are dedicated to nurturing the next generation of small business leaders and equipping them with the tools they need to grow and thrive,” said Selin Bahadirli, executive vice president, Services, Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa, Mastercard.

In Egypt, a significant proportion of men (41%) and women (38%) identify as entrepreneurs, reflecting the country’s evolving business landscape. In contrast to the rest of EEMEA, older generations, especially Gen X (54% of men and 51% of women) are more likely to consider themselves entrepreneurs than millennials and Gen Z.

77% of women in Egypt have considered starting or running their own business. This increases to 83% among Gen Z women. However, more than half (56%) of Egyptian women are yet to do so.

As well as formal business ventures, half of Egyptian women have a side hustle to make money outside of their main job, rising to 59% among Gen X women. For many women, the entrepreneurial spirit is inspired by an appetite to earn more money (60%), save for a specific goal (52%) and gain financial independence (45%).

The most commonly cited reasons for starting their business among women founders in Egypt are that they wanted to pursue their dream (48%) or had a brilliant idea that they needed to see through (39%). 37% of women said they desired freedom from traditional working structures, the same number wanted a better work-life balance, an equal number felt the time was right in their life, and the same percentage believed their idea could improve people’s lives. The last number is far higher than the global average, where 20% of women cited this as a motivation for starting their business.

The top sectors in which Egyptian women would like to start a business include education (24%), cosmetics (20%), and marketing/advertising/PR/market research (17%).

In an encouraging finding, 98% of women business owners in Egypt are optimistic about revenue growth over the next five years. This number is higher than in the rest of EEMEA (89%).

Despite the evident appetite for entrepreneurship, the research shows that for many women, including current business owners, there are challenges. The risk of failure (30%) and getting the capital to launch (25%) are reported as the biggest challenges preventing women from starting a business. Meanwhile, women are more likely than men to view lack of confidence as a hurdle (8% vs. 6%).

Among women who have already founded a business, 37% say the biggest challenge when starting out was assessing critical digital infrastructure, such as payment systems, and 35% were struggling to find funding. A third say the biggest challenge was knowing which technology was right for their business. More than a quarter (26%) of women want to build a sustainable business but do not know how – this is similar to all women across EEMEA (31%).

Training on how to develop a business plan (38%), access to AI tools to solve business challenges (34%) and having a business partner (33%) would make Egyptian women feel more confident in starting their own business. The research notes that women in the country are more open to embracing advanced technologies to help them do business than their male counterparts. 73% of Egyptian founders (men and women) regularly use AI in their business, and 87% say it has delivered significant cost and/or time savings for their business.

In terms of cybersecurity, 81% of men and 80% for women feel the need to better educate themselves about how to protect their business from a potential cyberattack. However, men (41%) are more likely than women (24%) to admit they are unsure how to protect their business from a cyberattack. These findings highlight the key role of secure digital transactions in business success.

Mastercard’s survey sends a clear message that Egyptian women have the ambition to shape the future of business yet are facing significant challenges. As International Women’s Day 2025 approaches, the company remains committed to fostering an inclusive digital economy where women entrepreneurs are not just supported but celebrated as key drivers of economic progress.

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Are you planning on starting your own business this year?

From business consultants and life coaches to small bakery owners and start-up CEOs, to side-hustlers and everything in between, more women are taking the digital lane to achieve entrepreneurial success.

And while the old adage ‘take the leap and the net will appear’ can spur entrepreneurs to take action, every woman knows planning and preparation is the key to ensuring success.

Firstly, you’re in the right place; in 2021, out of 47 countries surveyed, the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor survey found that the United Arab Emirates has the most supportive environment for entrepreneurship and the highest score for empowering female entrepreneurs to start businesses and become entrepreneurs.

For those of you who know you want to start your own business, who have been nurturing an idea and are now researching the tools and methods to make it a reality, you’ll no doubt be considering all the factors and opportunities you’ll need to take advantage of.

To help make sure you’ve got the right things on your list and to help you use this year’s International Women’s Day as inspiration to get your journey off to a great start, here are six key actions to consider.

1. Lifelong Learning: Owning and running a successful business requires life-long learning and entrepreneurs must learn to move and adapt to a fast-moving business world, to both survive and capitalise on their early successes. Surround yourself with people and chances to learn and build your armory of tools to help get your business – and yourself – through any eventuality. Take advantage of the many resources available both online through virtual classes development and learning, as well as in-person sessions, workshops and lectures in the UAE.

2. Build a diverse support network: Many entrepreneurs are driven individuals, but it’s human nature and a very wise business attitude to have a supportive network or team around you. Seeking support, wisdom and a trusted sounding-board to help you through the first steps of running a business can be invaluable, harnessing diverse thinking and lived experience that helps you look at the obstacles you’ll face and overcome in a number of different ways.

3. Become more agile: Now more than ever, and particularly as we emerge from the global pandemic, there’s even more need to be nimble and make critical business decisions with few certainties and with little time. Learn how to think fast and be on your feet, how to avoid getting bogged down and how to go with your instinct, or call on your trusted support team to quickly bounce ideas off before you take the plunge with a tricky issue.

4. Just ask the difficult questions: You won’t know the answers to everything that comes your way, and the fear of that might hold you back from doing the right thing. But an attitude of being able to ‘just ask the question’ can be a huge asset to keep you moving. As you start to slowly, but surely, build up your knowledge of what your business needs, and the actions you need to take, you’ll grow in confidence and learn that few things need to stand in your way. Seek experts – whether that’s family members, friends, Facebook groups in related topics, or pick up the phone and talk to someone who’s been there and done it already.

5. Dream real, but dream big too: You started your business because you have a big dream that is close to your heart, a vision you want to see realized. But the realities of life may get in the way. Your passion, your story, and how you share it, can have a big impact to inspire others to join you to make it happen. Ask yourself; what motivated you to start this venture in the first place and what you wish to achieve. Have realistic goals, but grand ambitions – and take good people along with you.

6. Have a strong online presence: Your audience, customers and influencers are online, so you need to be there too. Create your own exposure, interact and listen to your customers and build and maintain relationships with those who will buy into your idea and product. It’s easy to get started – take some simple steps to build your online presence with a website, even if it is just one page to get started. Register your business’ domain name and use a website builder tool from companies like GoDaddy, which gives you templates, tools and resources that help you make a great impact and take the pain out of getting your digital platform up and running. Now it’s time to start cultivating and building your digital presence with your website and integrated with an online store and engaging through social media posts, and further developing your website with blogs and digital marketing.

So, is 2022 International Women’s Day the day you decide to build your own venture online?

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If International Women’s Day is an occasion to celebrate women across the globe, it is for businesswomen and entrepreneurs, an opportunity to review their performance and design strategies which will keep pace with the developments of a period which is being considered as the fastest and most intense in modern history.

Businesswomen are not only the guardians of their achievements and those of their female peers; they are responsible for taking them to a level reflective of real, qualitative partnerships. This should not just be justified by the women-to-men ratio, but by the impact their businesses have on the economy and on community, and whether or not their business mission and outcomes are in service of national interests.

If we address the reality of Emirati women entrepreneurs in the UAE, there are many investments that can be made to achieve a greater output, in terms of both output and value. The first is government support for women’s projects and capacity development programmes and the accompanying support for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that make up 94 percent companies operating in the country with a contribution of  60 percent to the nation’s non-oil GDP.

The second investment will be in economic diversification policies. There are emerging sectors that are still in the process of being formed and will be established soon, representing an opportunity for women to play leading roles role in shaping these sectors and define their trends from the get-go. These sectors include as emerging technologies, IT, financial engineering, modern agriculture, intermediate services that enable the public to access various products and services, as well as smart cities and digital transformation.

Businesswomen’s strong entry and success in these emerging sectors will require expanding their specialisation capacities, and broadening their horizons beyond fashion, design, personal care products, handicrafts, heritage and traditional trade, to new unlimited areas.

By entering emerging sectors, businesswomen will have a special and influential place in the economy of the future.

The third is a significant investment and a prerequisite for achieving the first two. It entails boosting women’s general participation, and in business, within the UAE’s private sector. Doing so, will refine their skills, allow them to gain both local and global expertise from functioning in a market that is driven by innovation and competition. This will play a pivotal role in the setting women up for lifelong success, should they venture into entrepreneurship or business.

As for personal inputs required by businesswomen, they need to forge more strategic and permanent partnerships with the private sector, which could be forged through cooperation with local and international companies to implement projects and create innovative products. The past two decades have witnessed mergers of many local and global entities and enterprises. These present women entrepreneurs both local and international market access.

These are the key factors that stand out at this stage, and in the context of these factors, there is significant community and government support to women to ensure their socio-economic empowerment.

Let us invest in enabling this support to reach fullest extent. Let 2021, as defined by International Women’s Day, be a year of choosing to challenge, a year of bigger investments into women’s future ambitions and achievements, and to always set our goals in a way that shape an equitable society and a common future for all.

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