“Build Your Business for Scalability”: Tanzanian Entrepreneur Gloria Loishiye

Gloria found out about the 2023 UNITAR entrepreneurship and financial literacy training programme through an email in her mailbox. The promising benefits of the programme and its focus on women’s empowerment caught her attention, and she decided to apply. Once the programme began, Gloria appreciated its comprehensive, holistic approach.

It was more technical and more supportive than I expected, which was a good experience.” –Gloria Loishiye, Tanzanian entrepreneur and UNITAR alumna

One of the first things she learned was how women’s businesses in the African region tend to be on a small scale compared to that of men. “Women were just doing small businesses to feed ourselves and our kids,” she says. She noticed how fellow women entrepreneurs faced similar challenges across the region. “If you’re a woman running a business – the men are given more respect. It’s the same everywhere,” she says. “The challenges, they cross over countries.”

She was therefore encouraged to learn in the programme about funding opportunities for African women entrepreneurs, especially if they collaborated within and outside country borders. There are possibilities to be explored, and Gloria and the other Tanzanian training alumnae are staying in touch to get to know each other better and discover synergies.

Thanks to the training, Gloria experienced a paradigm shift in how she runs her company. She uses practical accounting and risk management skills, and she has become more intentional, taking actions with the desired results in mind. She is also more conscious about gender, and that awareness shapes the decisions she makes for her business and how she engages with the community.