Personalized learning for African women entrepreneurs, the accelerating ingredient for successful business support

Personalization entails tailoring curriculum, andragogy, instructional design approaches and corporate personalized learning environments to fit the unique needs of each learner individually.

In the past two year we have been working to understand the entrepreneurs that we are servicing and what best ways we can serve them, throughout this time, we have learned that spilling seeds without understanding the type of soil is wastage of time and resources.

Our programs, workshops and meetups like many were tailored around what we see are the needs on ground and it has worked to some but we realized it’s not bringing the results that we were hoping to see.

Then we thought, what if we tailor them in such a way, it caters every entrepreneur’s reality instead? It’s crazy and tough I know, but let’s see where this journey is going.

The reason why we believe this will change a lot of things and accelerate the growth of female entrepreneurs is because like kids ( both the entrepreneur and the business) have different needs and realities hence tailored support is as crucial as being given medicine according to your diagnosis.

Personalized learning and strategies have 5 major characteristics that we believe if capitalized on, the results will be exponential;

Targeted

Instead of providing a whole ocean of knowledge and slew of training, filtering those who actually need learning support is important.

Have you heard of the saying that “ entrepreneurs no longer need mentoring, they need funding”? As much as we may not fully agree with this statement, we understand the perspective of the statement.

Now we still believe entrepreneurs need to learn, learning never ends but understanding those who actually need that kind of learning you are providing and onboarding them is more impactful and more effective than just having a whole group of women entrepreneurs in a particular program without understanding their needs first.

Among ways that YouTube, Google etc. are more effective in getting information is that an individual can search for specific information and get details that target.

Customized

Each business and business environment especially in the African context is different, from societal to economical to legal environments so it’s important to have a personalize learning to make easy customization of the experience and content to meet their needs and context.

Engaged

It’s a principle that more engaged learners equal more successful learning outcomes. The element of direct engagement with the women entrepreneurs is very crucial during the learning and during the follow ons.

Now with the pandemic, there is an opportunity presented and of course a challenge.

An opportunity is that one can offer the same learning experience to the women entrepreneurs from across Africa with minimum resources possible but there is still a huge gap in digital access. Meaning not all entrepreneurs especially small scale ones will be able to have access to the programs.

Appropriate

With personalize learning, we have learned that sometimes the training given to the entrepreneurs would be appropriately fitting if given to their teams or better yet including their teams.

So with personalized learning, it’s easy to map the sub-set of group within the businesses enrolled that will benefit more from a particular learning.

Timely

This is the secret sauce and also a game changer. When learning is personalized, it is delivered at a time when it can be most effective i.e. when the entrepreneur is most in need of it, and not several months later or before depending on the timeline of the benefactors.

This comes in handy with the use of digital platforms to deliver such learning experience although personal engagement will still be needed from time to time.

Here the Tutor Model may be most effective also because mentors can easily identify and respond to the needs of each entrepreneur, passing over what has already been mastered and spending more time with additional resources in areas in which learners struggle.

Though tutor model is expensive to be delivered at scale, but that doesn’t mean personalization has to be abandoned.

“So, why is personalized learning important? Because it creates a learner-centric training environment, as opposed to a standardized schedule-based one. By putting learners in control of their learning needs, organizations can create highly effective and efficient learning programs across the company.”

Personalized and adaptive learning is of course not the whole puzzle but it’s one of the biggest piece of the puzzle to be ignored when it comes to supporting women-led businesses and women entrepreneurs into profitable growth.

When applied with human-centric approach combining with technology can transform and accelerate learning space for women entrepreneurs and prompt massive positive results.

If we can prepare them to be business savvy within their context and adoptable towards changing regional and global environments, the results will reflect their potential.

Written by Vanessa Kisowile — SheFound