Performance of women owned enterprises accessing credit from village credit and savings associations in Kenya

In the recent years there has been an influx of women venturing in the field of entrepreneurship in developing countries. This is attributed to advocacy on women empowerment programs and policies. Women owned small micro enterprises in Sub-Saharan Africa continue to record poor performances compared to their male counterparts. The purpose of this study was set to investigate selected factors perceived to influence the performance of women-owned small micro enterprises in Kenya. The factors studied included credit and dividends accessed from table banking groups, entrepreneur’s experience, education levels of women entrepreneurs and income of women entrepreneurs. The study adopted cross-sectional survey design and a sample of 225 women entrepreneurs who participate in Village Saving and Credit Associations from Nakuru Town Kenya was used. The study found that all the women entrepreneurs had attained formal education with majority 43.6% having attained secondary education. Results also revealed that Ordinal logit regression model (OLR) had Pseudo R2 of 60.2% and 49.3% which was above the statistical threshold of 20%. This implied that the selected factors income, credit and education level of the respondents influenced positive changes in the net profits and capital of Small Micro Enterprises (SMEs). Based on the study findings, Village Saving and Credit Associations were identified as one of the effective strategy that can enable more women entrepreneurs in the rural and urban areas to access affordable credit.