Women have been paving the path for entrepreneurship in every industry for many decades and women entrepreneurs have been able to withstand economic and business pressures to become some of the best.
Today, the list of women entrepreneurs spans many industries, Marie Therese Niyomwungeri is one of those successful entrepreneurs who have made a significant mark of recent and have built a world-renowned brand through her own hard work and strong drive.
While women entrepreneurs are historically most known for running fashion houses or cosmetic companies, in more recent decades, many have made their marks in other industries, such as leisure and hospitality.
Niyomwungeri is one of the women entrepreneurs who decided to venture into both medical industry, leisure and hospitality. A medical doctor by profession, wife and mother of five children is the proud owner of TEDGA’s Business Group located in Gahanga of Kicukiro District.
“I started my business way back in 2013, having being disappointed by one of the wedding planners I had hired to organize mine which did not turn to my expectation.” She says.
Niyomwungeri who was then running two clinics in Kicukiro and Nyamirambo then decided to open a discussion about her plans of providing services of wedding planner to her husband.
Given the little capital that they had, she decided to start with a few things like hair saloon, wedding clothes, and vehicles for hire and later on contracted on a reception hall from Kicukiro district authorities for some time.
“The area that I had contracted has also space where I was able to utilize it into an amusement park for children but since my contract was coming to an end, we got some land in Gahanga and decided to relocate there, got some loan and was able to buy more land adjacent to ours for construction of a vocational hotel that I had initially planned for.” She explains.
Currently, TEDGA’s Business Group offers transit equipped houses for wedding guests, Rwandan from the Diaspora and all those who want to relax and refresh themselves from stress and fatigue.
Besides that the place has a vocational hotel with large garden, bigger and small tents for religious wedding ceremonies, birthday recreation center, meeting rooms for conferences, amusement park for kids, car rental and wedding planning services where they decorate all types of decoration desired by the clients.
The vocation hotel caters for families that have children where they have enough space for the children to play from while the parents are attending to other things.
Despite Covid-19 pandemic having stalled their work still in phase one that started in 2018, the big plan at Gahanga now is picking up.
Niyomwungeri is thankful towards the government of Rwanda for empowering women. “I am really grateful toward the call to empower women by the government as we can be able to handle multi tasks as much as men and sometimes even better.
Most entrepreneurs and executives still tend to be men, but more and more women are becoming business leaders and innovators.
While there are a handful of woman founders, the past few decades have marked a great upsurge in self-made women in business.
