World Association for Small and Medium Enterprises (WASME) is organizing 18th International Conference on SMEs in Accra, Ghana during July 25-29, 2012. The 18th International Conference on SMEs would discuss opportunities, issues and approaches involved in empowering women through entrepreneurship.

Women entrepreneurship development is a key tool for economic empowerment of women around the world. Promotion of women entrepreneurs as a part of SME development programmes has become an important policy strategy in many countries, both developed and developing ones. Although women constitute the majority of the total population, the entrepreneurial world is still a male dominated one. Entrepreneurial activities transform the lives of women. This helps in generating jobs and wealth creation.

We invite papers pertaining to any of the following themes:

 Gender, SMEs and Entrepreneurship
 SMEs and Enterprise development in the fight against poverty
 Financial Systems in empowering women SMEs and entrepreneurship
 South – south Cooperation
 Women in Agri-businesses , creative industry, media
 Women entrepreneurs in informal sector

Sub-themes

• Gender in Economic leadership with a focus on SMEs and start-up entrepreneurs
• Women agility to respond to an ever-changing world of ICT
• Women owned SMEs in creative industry and media
• Women as informal sector entrepreneurs and their role in alleviating poverty
• Role of SMEs and Entrepreneurship in attaining Millennium Development Goals and fighting poverty

• Enhancing SME competitiveness through global partnerships
• Entrepreneurship: A critical Tool in achieving MDG 1
• Job Creation, Women and Global Development
• The gap between business models and capital: A new form of revenue generation that would be an investable enterprise
• Finance options, alternative modes of finance for SMEs, especially for women-led enterprises
• Strengthening access to finance for women-led MSMEs in Developing and Least developed countries
• How to use Social Marketing and Media to increase Market Share
• Diversifying Economic Growth: Role of women entrepreneurs
• Policies, schemes and programmes to promote women entrepreneurship and women owned SMEs: Best practices and international experience
• Effective and Competitive Banking Sector for job creation and poverty reduction
• Building bridges between producers, buyers and investors
• Role of women in infrastructure development and the extractive industry; “South – south” cooperation: Challenges and Opportunities
• Accelerated Development of Agri-Businesses
• Agri-Business: A key determinant of overall economic growth and Poverty Reduction in Africa

We invite your papers on any of the above themes and sub-themes.

Conference organizers are interested in receiving abstracts for papers. Preference will be given to empirical research papers and practice-oriented papers with case studies and best practices that have a critical bearing on women empowerment through SMEs and entrepreneurship development.

Last date for sending abstract

Interested participants should send a detailed abstract of their planned presentation (about 500 words in English) accompanied by a short biographical note (100 words) electronically no later than June 10, 2012 at paper@wasmeicsme2012.org.

Authors will be intimated about acceptance of their Abstract latest by June 15, 2012.

Final Paper

Full paper with a presentation (in ppt.) should be submitted by July 7, 2012.

All the approved papers will be published in the post-Conference Report.