The Women Who Built Africa’s Markets

Across Africa, markets have always been more than places to buy and sell. They are centres of commerce, information, community and social power — and for generations, women have been at their heart.

From the market women of Ghana and Nigeria to traders in Togo, Benin, Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo, women have built businesses that supported households, financed children's education and connected rural producers with rapidly growing cities.

Long before conversations about female entrepreneurship became fashionable, African women were already entrepreneurs.

Their businesses were not necessarily registered companies or businesses operating from formal offices. Capital could be small, records informal and goods carried by hand. Yet collectively, women traders became an essential part of local and regional economies.

Commerce as a Form of Independence

In West Africa particularly, women developed sophisticated trading networks spanning generations. Some began with modest stalls and eventually became wholesalers controlling the movement of textiles, food and imported goods.

Ghana's famous market women became particularly influential. In Accra's Makola Market, women established themselves as formidable commercial actors, with some accumulating enough economic influence to become important figures within their communities.

Elsewhere, women developed cross-border networks that moved goods between neighbouring countries, often navigating currencies, languages and changing regulations without the institutional support available to larger companies.

But the importance of market women has never been purely economic.

Markets have also created spaces where women exchange information, organise collectively and exercise forms of leadership. Market associations can establish rules, resolve disputes and represent traders in negotiations with local authorities.

In some societies, senior market women have held recognised leadership positions. Among the Yoruba, for example, the title of Ìyál'ọ́jà — “Mother of the Market” — represents a longstanding institution of female commercial leadership.

The Invisible Economy That Keeps Cities Moving

Today, millions of African women continue to earn their livelihoods within the informal economy.

They sell vegetables and fish, textiles and cosmetics, prepared food, household products and countless other goods. Their businesses may appear small individually, but together they form part of the economic infrastructure upon which many African cities depend.

Yet informal traders often operate with limited access to finance, insurance, pensions or legal protection. A business can be vulnerable to illness, redevelopment, eviction, economic shocks or sudden changes in municipal policy.

Modernisation can create another tension. African cities need safer infrastructure, sanitation and organised commercial spaces, but redevelopment that ignores existing traders can remove the very people who made those commercial districts successful.

From Market Trader to Entrepreneur

The image of entrepreneurship in Africa is changing. Technology companies, venture capital and start-ups increasingly dominate conversations about the continent's economic future.

But Africa's entrepreneurial history did not begin with technology.

It can also be found in generations of women who learned to negotiate prices, understand customers, manage stock, extend credit, build supplier relationships and survive economic uncertainty — often while carrying responsibility for their families.

Their businesses may not have appeared on stock exchanges or investment reports, but their economic contribution has been profound.

Africa's markets tell an important story: some of the continent's oldest entrepreneurs were women whose businesses were built one transaction at a time.