Oral History Archive Rania Ayman

In this interview, Rania Ayman, Founder and CEO of Entreprenelle speaks about her entrepreneurship endeavors, specifically as a woman in the field. She talks about her early beginnings as an undergraduate student, her concept of entrepreneurship, and challenges she confronted on her journey, in a relatively new “field” in the Arab region. She also talks about the difficulties imposed by the novel coronavirus pandemic and its impact on entrepreneurship and business in general.

Rania Ayman is an Egyptian woman, a graduate of the Faculty of Commerce, Business Administration division, Ain Shams University, Cairo, class 2013. During her undergraduate years, she participated in many extracurricular activities, including Enactus. In this context, she points out that opportunities for further growth are scarce in government universities, and that the concept of entrepreneurship was still relatively unheard of back then. As an undergraduate, she also worked on projects affiliated with marginalized neighborhoods in Cairo, such as Saft al-Laban and Hayy al-Zabbaleen (Garbage Collectors’ neighborhood). In Saft al-Laban, she took part in helping women learn a craft, such as sewing. In Hayy al-Zabbaleen, she helped them take up recycling. In addition, during her university years, she had her own project on Facebook and worked in digital marketing until graduation.

Rania currently holds several important positions. She is a consultant with UN Women’s Project Agora and a steering committee member at WEN (Women Entrepreneurs Network). In addition, she works with the National Council for Women in Egypt and is Egypt’s only representative at the Beijing 25+ Youth Task Force. Rania is also an alumna of the International Visitor Program, an exchange program where participants travel to the USA to learn more about how their peers ‘lead’ and develop their communities. Additionally, she is an alumna of the Danish Egyptian Dialogue Initiative’s program “Women Take the Lead” and a member of the Rotary Club.

When asked about Entreprenelle, Rania said that the company holds a number of activities, the biggest of which is “She Can,” the largest women’s entrepreneurship event in the Arab region. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was organized online in 2021 and was attended by approximately 9000 individuals. She stressed that all Arabic-speaking individuals were welcome to attend. Entreprenelle also conducts workshops and trainings on entrepreneurship, where women are trained on coming up with a business model, marketing, logistics, etc.

As for challenges that Rania faced when starting her own company, she said that resources were available, but inaccessible to her as a girl, and that not many people helped her early on. She thus wanted to establish Entreprenelle to help women overcome the challenges she, herself, faced and for them not to commit her same mistakes. Rania added that there were additional challenges that relate to the nature of the job in Egypt. For instance, no laws govern the social entrepreneurship sector. She was also only 23 years old when she established her company, and had to face a lot of unfortunate stereotyping, since some people believed that she would set aside her professional ambitions once she is married. Personally speaking, Rania also said that even though her family did not oppose her work, they were not supportive enough. She justified that by the fact that the concept of entrepreneurship was not easily grasped by them, when compared to more traditional jobs. Rania believes she overcame these challenges, as nobody underestimates Entreprenelle now, thanks to its impact on the entrepreneurship scene.

In a different but related vein, Rania recounts some of the challenges she faced in relation to the training she provides at Entreprenelle itself. She regrets the fact that some women who come to the training do not believe in their own abilities due to their upbringing. Many of these women grew up with low self-esteem, so they do not believe they can establish a successful project. They, therefore, do all the related registration paperwork under their brother’s or father’s names, hoping to avoid the legal problems that could ensue for them if the project fails. She believes that this does not relate to the specific social class the women come from, as women from different social classes have that mentality. However, Rania sees that numbers and statistics point to the fact that women have proven themselves on the entrepreneurship scene, citing the fact that more men terminate their projects than women.

Rania also deconstructed some misconceptions about entrepreneurship and startups in the interview. She said that finding an investor to fund one’s startup is not necessary at the beginning but is only important when one’s goal is to expand their business. At Entreprenelle, she attempts to spread the right information among women interested in entrepreneurship. She also asserted that the goal of Entreprenelle is not to isolate women from men and keep them in closed communities, but to adopt UN Women’s principle of “inclusion of men in the process of empowering women”.

Rania does not believe that there are jobs acceptable for women and others acceptable for men. She thinks, however, that men and women are different and that women are more capable of multitasking than men. She also said that, from her own experience, women are more committed, since they are more motivated to prove themselves before a society that undermined them for long. In addition, she said she values women’s creativity and their superior ability to work with others. She also discussed women’s commodification in advertisements, where women are used for their physical beauty, and not appreciated for their abilities and skills.

Finally, regarding COVID-19 and its impact on the entrepreneurship scene, she said that her company was able to overcome the challenges posed by the pandemic to a great extent. Her company had to quickly adopt new “digital” strategies as a result. However, other companies could not do the same and unfortunately failed. She pointed out that Entreprenelle worked with the British Council in Egypt on a project called “Women Entrepreneurs at Risk,” which focused on helping women entrepreneurs whose startups suffered the consequences of the pandemic.