Abstract:

This paper outlines the impact of women entrepreneurs on sustainable development in Zambia. Zambia continues to lag behind other countries in Africa when it comes to women entrepreneurship, despite the Zambian government putting in measures to try and empower women entrepreneurship in most of the districts.  Women have embarked on different entrepreneurial undertakings in areas of agriculture, small-scale processing, clothing, and food processing, among others. This study clearly examines the way in which social enterprises led and owned by women contribute to the growth of the economy, and this leads to the alleviation of poverty and improves the living standards of people in several rural areas. This paper analyses the recent studies of women entrepreneurs in Zambia, which encompass small-scale and rural ventures, and identifies the key patterns of impact as well as persistent challenges. Women social entrepreneurs often create numerous opportunities and revenue collection to contribute to massive community development, and this fosters innovation. A mixed method was used, and data were collected using a semi-structured questionnaire from 30 successful women who own SMEs. Some of the findings showed that Most of the women-led enterprises struggle to achieve sustainable livelihoods or long-term viability due to structural barriers such as limited access to finance, lack of institutional support, infrastructural and policy constraints, and gendered socio-cultural limitations Moreover, even when social entrepreneurs adopt modern tools such as digital marketing they often face difficulties measuring social impact, achieving scale, and sustaining operations over time.

Keywords:

Women Entrepreneurship, Social Entrepreneurship, Sustainable Development.

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