| Summary: |
This article interrogates the promise of inclusive markets as the vehicle of gender empowerment empirically through a case study of a small women-owned enterprise in Nairobi on its journey to inclusion in one of the world’s largest corporate supply chains as part of their empowerment through enterprise initiative. Chronicling the efforts of women entrepreneurs to meet the stringent imperatives of a global retailer and be made ‘ready’ for inclusion in the global marketplace, the article reveals how this conversion to global supplier leaves small enterprises in Africa leveraged and dependent rather than secure and autonomous. The inclusive market becomes a vehicle of unfulfilled aspiration and opportunity foreclosed that falls short of its inclusionary ideals.
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