In October 2012, the Government of Ethiopia launched the Women Entrepreneurship Development Project (WEDP), with the aim of increasing the earnings and employment of growth-oriented micro and small enterprises (MSEs) owned or partly-owned by women entrepreneurs in Ethiopia. In doing so, it created the first ever women-entrepreneur focused line of credit in Africa, and one of few such operations in the world. In addition to the USD 45.9 million in financing, WEDP also offered a variety of innovative training opportunities, designed to not only enhance the business skills of its clients, but the
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In October 2012, the Government of Ethiopia launched the Women Entrepreneurship Development Project (WEDP), with the aim of increasing the earnings and employment of growth-oriented micro and small enterprises (MSEs) owned or partly-owned by women entrepreneurs in Ethiopia. In doing so, it created the first ever women-entrepreneur focused line of credit in Africa, and one of few such operations in the world. In addition to the USD 45.9 million in financing, WEDP also offered a variety of innovative training opportunities, designed to not only enhance the business skills of its clients, but their entrepreneurial mindset and practices as well. WEDP has been widely recognized for its achievements in empowering women entrepreneurs and for raising their profile throughout Ethiopia's financial system. The project model has demonstrated how an incentives-based strategy, coupled with hands-on management and a robust monitoring and evaluation system, can converge to successfully address a persistent constraint.
In this document, we articulate some of the main conceptual and practical elements underpinning WEDP's model. Following this lessons piece, we present a collection of research and knowledge documents produced by the project thus far. We hope these lessons and experiences can inform practitioners with insights on working with the MSE sector, with a focus on applying a strong gender lens to reach a promising but underserved market segment: women entrepreneurs.
Excerpts from publication.
The research and knowledge documents contained in the appendices are: Better loans or better borrowers?: impact of meso-credit on female-owned enterprises in Ethiopia / Salman Alibhai, Niklas Buehren and Sreelakshmi Papineni; Disruptive finance: using psychometrics to overcome collateral constraints in Ethiopia / Salman Alibhai, Niklas Buehren, Rachel Coleman, Markus Goldstein and Francesco Strobbe; Full esteem ahead?: mindset-oriented business training in Ethiopia / Salman Alibhai, Niklas Buehren, Michael Frese, Markus Goldstein, Sreelakshmi Papineni and Kathrin Wolf; and Taking management: digital lessons from the development of an innovative management information system for small businesses in Ethiopia / Salman Alibhai, Francesco Strobbe, and Espen Villanger.
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