She Starts Africa

Salmine worked as an incubator for social entrepreneurs in Colorado before returning to Tunisia, where she realised that there was a real need for incubator programmes for women in the country. Women account for only 28% of Tunisia’s total labour force, and face significant challenges as entrepreneurs due to social and economic discrimination. Salmine co-founded She Starts Africa in 2018 and began offering female university students workshops for free. Using the data and feedback they gathered during this initial outreach, She Starts Africa was able to develop an incubation programme to build women’s capacity in entrepreneurship.

The 2019 One Young World Summit in London gave Salmine more perspective on how she could help the cause of women entrepreneurs in Africa. She built a network of connections through One Young World which she maintains to this day, elevating her ability to co-create and collaborate with other innovators and entrepreneurs. She Starts Africa has managed to simultaneously develop programmes for women entrepreneurs who are only just beginning their entrepreneurial journey, and those who have experience with entrepreneurship but want to learn more about scaling their businesses and utilising digital tools to make that happen.

She Starts Africa has expanded across the continent, and is now active through university clubs in six countries. The organisation has an extensive list of partners and corporate CSR departments with whom they collaborate to design entrepreneurial programmes. The beginner workshops start with confidence-building exercises before tackling technical training. She Starts Africa’s initiation programme, known as The Labyrinth, lasts for six weeks with actionable outcomes, while the Female Founders workshop is aimed at a more established audience and is oriented towards specific market outputs. So far, the social enterprise has accelerated the entrepreneurship of 750 women.

“I still have my connections from One Young World, I still talk to and collaborate with them, especially in my scholarship. The most interesting thing is the relationships and the network, and the different aspects of the programme that make you think about what you can do better”