Innovation capabilities of women enterprise in informal settings

This paper aims to explore how women entrepreneurs in informal settings, especially in the fishing sub-sector in rural communities, relate to different dimensions of innovation. Specifically, this paper examines how women entrepreneurs engage in process, managerial and technological innovations. This paper also examines how they fund their business, develop their products across the value chain innovatively and how it influences their business output and welfare.

A face-to-face structured interview was administered among 100 women entrepreneurs in the fishing agriculture sub-sector in the Anam community, Anambra East LGA, in Anambra State. The study uses the multiple logistic regression model, descriptive analysis technique and it is quantitative in approach. The research is situated within the Local Innovation Systems and adopts diffusion innovation theory.

The study established the following: level of education and learning capabilities are significant predictors of process innovation capabilities among women-owned enterprise in informal settings; level of education, years of fishing experience and learning capabilities are significant predictors of technological innovation capabilities among women-owned enterprise in informal settings; and level of education is the only significant predictor of management innovation capabilities among women-owned enterprise in informal settings.

This paper focuses attention on the issue of innovation by women who operate in the informal sector of the fishing sub-sector in the agricultural value chain with attention for their productivity and welfare.