Africa Gender Policy Briefs
75 items available
Permanent URI for this collection
The Gender Innovation
Lab (GIL) conducts impact
evaluations of development
interventions in Sub-Saharan
Africa, seeking to generate
evidence on how to close
the gender gap in earnings,
productivity, assets and
agency. The GIL team is
currently working on over
50 impact evaluations in 21
countries with the aim of
building an evidence base
with lessons for the region.
Items in this collection
1 - 6 of 6
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Publication
Re-Thinking Firm Level Data Collection during COVID-19: Using Mobile Sensing to Understand the Financial Behaviors of Entrepreneurs
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-08)SMEs around the world are entering a crisis period in light of COVID-19, adding new urgency to understanding firm-level financial behaviors and challenges. At the same time, traditional methods of in-person data collection pose a health risk to both enumerator and firm and contravene social distancing guidelines and public health policies. Remote data collection methods such as phone sensing offer a viable and promising alternative. Phone sensing utilizes data generated from mobile phone usage, from GPS location to call logs to battery life – to offer insights on firm behavior, trends, and challenges. While the technology is still new and untested, this note explores some of the early insights gained from a pilot of mobile sensing technology to understand the financial behavior of women entrepreneurs in Ethiopia. Phone sensing data allows us to glean some insights into the lives and behaviors of entrepreneurs which traditional data collection might not reveal. One of the key finding of this pilot is that mobile phone sensing data correlates with business outcomes. Insights such as the ones from this pilot, if collected at a larger and more systematic scale, could enhance our understanding of borrower behavior, and could help lenders and policymakers better target potential borrowers, better understand when borrowers are likely to face adversity, and better design products to meet their needs. -
Publication
The Impacts of COVID-19 on Women-Owned Enterprises in Ethiopia: Findings from a High-Frequency Phone Survey
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-07)This brief summarizes findings from a high-frequency survey of women-owned firms in Ethiopia which participate in the International Development Association (IDA) - financed Women Entrepreneurship Development Project (WEDP). Over the past five years, WEDP reached nearly 40,000 women-owned firms in Ethiopia with meso-loans and business training. Many WEDP firms had been on a high-growth trajectory, with firms that benefited from WEDP services growing incomes by 67 percent and employment by 55 percent over a three-year period prior to the crisis. This brief is based on the results from the first round of the survey, implemented between May 15, 2020 and June 15, 2020, revealing some initial insights into the scale of the impacts and the nature of the challenges currently facing the WEDP firms. -
Publication
Algorithms for Inclusion: Data Driven Lending for Women Owned SMEs
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-06)All over the world, women have less access to credit than men. Because of both discriminatory property laws and unwritten social customs, women are less likely than men to own high-value assets that can be used as collateral to secure loans. Financial institutions in developing countries rely on heavy collateral requirements because they don’t have enough information about their borrowers. New technologies - many emerging from financial technology (fintech) startups in the Silicon Valley - have the potential to generate data on borrowers that can replace traditional collateral requirements, and unlock finance for women. In Ethiopia, the authors explored introducing fintech that can harness the data that financial institutions are already sitting on. The technology focuses on digitizing hard-copy loan application files of previous borrowers to identify trends and characteristics associated with repayment, and predict creditworthiness of new borrowers. Fintech solutions can viably address the collateral constraint for women borrowers, and can work even in low tech environments. But technology adoption isn’t easy, and assessing the readiness of financial institutions to adopt fintech and embark on technological change is a critical first step. -
Publication
From Learning to Earning: An Impact Evaluation of the Digital Opportunity Trust Entrepreneurship Training
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-09)Business and entrepreneurship training programs have become popular interventions intended to boost the profits of small businesses around the world. Despite their popularity, rigorous evidence on the impact of entrepreneurship training programs is thin. Indeed, a recent systematic review of published literature on entrepreneurship training noted that although entrepreneurship training programs are widely distributed and attended by tens of thousands of entrepreneurs globally, the majority of these programs have not yet been evaluated and thus their effects have not been verified. In October-November 2014 baseline data on 800 female entrepreneurs in Mekelle was collected. 400 of these female entrepreneurs were randomly assigned to the treatment group and offered to participate in the Digital Opportunity Trust (DOT) training immediately and the other 400 entrepreneurs were assigned to the control group and had to wait a minimum of 12 months before being offered the training. The first round of training was offered to the treatment group from January 2015 in half-day sessions over a period of 15 to 20 days at no cost to the participants, so that entrepreneurs could complete the training while continuing to attend to their businesses on a daily basis. From January to March 2016, approximately one year after the treatment group was offered the training, the research team followed-up with 729 female entrepreneurs of the original sample. The results in this policy note are intention-to-treat (ITT) impacts, i.e. the impact of being offered training, using the midline survey data. The preliminary results from this study confirm that a more innovative (non-cognitive skills based) type of business training can more effectively support women’s businesses. Additionally, participants of the DOT entrepreneurship training tend to be the lower performing businesses (measured by business profits), so reaching the higher performing businesses may require other training delivery mechanisms such as on-site consulting or coaching. This finding has particular relevance for those programs that are targeting specific types of entrepreneurs. Further research will rigorously examine the longer run impacts of the program and will attempt to uncover the missing piece of the puzzle of how entrepreneurs translate business training into business success. -
Publication
Female Entrepreneurs Who Succeed in Male-Dominated Sectors in Ethiopia
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-10)In developing countries, female entrepreneurs have low returns. Yet, the few women who cross over into traditionally male-dominated sectors double their profits. So why don't more women cross over? When parents and husbands support them, women are more likely to cross over. When they lack information on the earnings potential in male-dominated sectors, they are less likely to. This suggests a path to promote women entrepreneurs crossing over. The challenges Ethiopian women face in getting jobs and earning income come from a range of sources. Women start from a more difficult situation than men --without easy access to finance, land, training, education and effective business networks. The share of women in Ethiopia without education is almost twice that of men, which in turn limits women entrepreneurs' ability to grow their businesses. Reducing gender inequalities in education and the labor market could increase annual GDP growth in Ethiopia by around 1.9 percentage points. -
Publication
Financing Women Entrepreneurs in Ethiopia
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-09)The challenges faced by women-owned enterprises in the developing world are substantial. Only one-third of the world’s SMEs in the formal sector are currently run by women, and women owned businesses typically underperform men’s. Across countries and contexts, access to finance is continuously identified as the leading constraint faced by women entrepreneurs. While finance is a challenge for male and female enterprises alike, the difficulties are amplified for women, who are less likely to own assets which can serve as collateral andare more likely to suffer exclusion based on unequal property rights or discriminatory regulations, laws and customs. An estimated 70 percent of women-owned SMEs in the formal sector in developing countries are unserved or underserved by financial institutions.This amounts to a financing gap of 285 billion dollars. A diverse range of economic research shows that addressing this financing gap and investing in women-owned enterprises is one of the highes treturn opportunities available in emerging markets.As they grow, women-owned enterprises enhance labor participation and boost broad-based economic growth. In particular, due to higher female unemployment rates and the fact that women are more likely to hire other women, the growth offemale-owned enterprises can be a key driver in reducing high overall unemployment rates.