Indigenous Apprenticeship Systems as Mechanisms for Reducing Financial Inequality in Women-Owned SMEs in West Africa: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

This systematic literature review develops an integrative framework that synthesises Gender Empowerment Theory, the Resource-Based View (RBV), and Entrepreneurial Ecosystem perspectives to explain how indigenous apprenticeship systems in West Africa serve as mechanisms to reduce financial inequality in women-owned small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Following a PRISMA-compliant protocol that combines bibliometric and qualitative thematic analyses, the review synthesises 42 peer-reviewed articles retrieved from Scopus (2010–2026). Indigenous apprenticeship delivers a tripartite resource endowment—competency transfer, start-up capital, and network inscription—that formal financial and vocational institutions cannot replicate at equivalent cost, cultural legitimacy, or relational depth. However, patrilineal norms structurally bar most women from completing the full apprenticeship sequence, compounding discrimination in formal finance to produce a dual exclusion that single-domain interventions cannot resolve. Financial literacy emerges as the critical mediator between apprenticeship engagement and formal credit access, transmitted mainly through indigenous trade networks rather than formal schooling. Digital tools amplify rather than replace indigenous network capital, with the strongest empowerment effects among women who already have robust pre-existing networks. The review proposes a four-part policy architecture—gender-targeted post-apprenticeship capital grants, embedded financial-literacy modules, female master-mentorship programmes, and mobile-money linkage of graduation capital—that reforms rather than displaces indigenous institutions, advancing organisation studies by theorising informal institutions as simultaneous producers and gendered distributors of financial-inclusion outcomes.