Project profile — Women Entrepreneurship Development Program - Technical Assistance

• Ethiopia (100.00%)

• Secondary Education: Vocational training (11330) (15.00%)
• Banking And Financial Services: Formal sector financial intermediaries (24030) (60.00%)
• Business And Other Services: Business support services and institutions (25010) (15.00%)
• Industry: Small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) development (32130) (10.00%)

• Gender equality (significant objective)
• Environmental sustainability (cross-cutting) (significant objective)
• Participatory development and good governance (not targeted)
• Trade development (not targeted)
• Biodiversity (not targeted)
• Climate change mitigation (not targeted)
• Climate Change Adaptation (not targeted)
• Urban issues (significant objective)
• Desertification (not targeted)
• Children's issues (not targeted)
• Youth Issues (not targeted)
• Disability (not targeted)
• Indigenous Issues (not targeted)
• ICT as a tool for development (not targeted)

The project aims to support women entrepreneurs in certain urban and surrounding areas in Ethiopia. It seeks to give women entrepreneurs better access to finance and entrepreneurial and technical training and services. Women who have experience in running their own micro or small business decide to participate in the program and choose the components of the program that are most useful for them. The program helps women gain access to small loans, provides training on skills development, technology and product development, and also includes activities such as awareness raising campaigns to build family and community support for women entrepreneurs. This component of the project represents funds set aside for technical assistance to strengthen the capacity of key organizations to promote equality between women and men. For administrative reasons, sometimes the funds identified for technical assistance are included in the main project budget and sometimes, as in this case, they are assigned a separate project number.

The expected intermediate outcomes for this project include: increased effectiveness of Canada's development assistance to the Women's Entrepreneurship Development Program, in particular, strengthened capacity of key partner organizations to deliver services that respond to the needs of women entrepreneurs.

Results achieved as of March 2017 include: (1) more than 5,953 women entrepreneurs took loans worth ETB 1.41 Billion (61% of borrowers had never taken a loan before) and over 8,906 participated in business training; (2) with training alone, participating female enterprises grew profits by 44.7% and employment by 55.73%; (3) for women that took loans, participating female enterprises grew profits by 78% and employment by 68%, and repayment of loans stands at 99.4%; (4) for repeat borrowers, loan sizes have increased on average by 12,000% with loan size averages coming in at 236,715 ETB. These results have contributed to the microfinance institutions' improved ability to appraise clients and reduce the collateral requirements from an average of 200% of the value of the loan to 125%. At the same time, microfinance institutions associated with the project are adopting and diffusing new techniques to better reach and serve women entrepreneurs. They are developing new loan products and recognizing new forms of collateral such as vehicles, personal guarantees, and even business inventory, to secure loans. This is very relevant in a country where there is no existing collateral registry. The project is introducing innovative credit technologies to lenders, such as psychometric tests, to predict the ability of a borrower to repay a loan and reduce the need for collateral. If they score highly, they can borrow without traditional collateral. The test is being piloted and subjected to a rigorous impact evaluation. Other banks are pursuing this technology. Scaling-up this technology could fundamentally change the issue of access to credit in Ethiopia. These results have contributed to improving access to finance and services for women entrepreneurs.

• Proactive disclosure
• Related activities: Women Entrepreneurship Development Program in Ethiopia