Welcome to the Broad Experience, the show about women, the workplace and success. I'm Ashley Milthight.

Some of you know that I spent two weeks in January in Kenya building a house with a team from Habitat for Humanity.

Before I left for the build site in the Rift Valley, I spent a couple of days in the capital, Nairobi.

Africa is bursting with entrepreneurs, many of them women, most of them working to pull themselves out of poverty by

running micro businesses such as fruit and vegetable stools or selling secondhand clothes, what the

World Bank calls the informal sector of the economy. While I was in Nairobi, I interviewed two women

who became entrepreneurs after working in the formal private sector first, one in the film industry,

the other for a large corporation. Lydia Cayenne runs an event management company called

Safana Holdings, which she started 12 years ago. She employs 14 people.

While many women in Kenya still struggle to secure a bank loan, Lydia says her bank has been her

main source of funding since she started the business. When I chat with my banker, he says

they find it easier and better to give women loans than men, you know.

And of course, if you have a track record that, you know, if you tell them that you're going

to pay the money at a certain time and you actually pay it, I must say that is what has

helped me. I've not got finances from individuals, but I got it from my bank.

I asked if, as in the US and elsewhere, there are groups in Kenya that support female entrepreneurs.

Yes, there are quite a number of those groups, but I must tell you, in Kenya, every woman is an entrepreneur, you know, because when I look around now, I find that

most homes are actually supported by women. Hers is one of them. Her former husband also had his own

business, but Lydia says he wasn't running it well, and even though she implored him to pack it in and join

her company, he wasn't interested. Eventually, the even though she implored him to pack it in and join her company,

he wasn't interested.

Eventually, the business went down and he lost a lot of his and other people's money.

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