Africa Gender Innovation Lab

92 items available

Permanent URI for this collection

https://hdl.handle.net/10986/25446

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.

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GIL Top Policy Lessons on Empowering Adolescent Girls
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-05-31) World Bank
Overlapping crises such as climate change, the ongoing recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, regional conflicts and rising global food insecurity exacerbate the inequalities faced by adolescent girls, making them particularly vulnerable in these critical times. For many girls, these circumstances force them to make decisions about employment and their fertility at an early age, limits their access to formal education, and further exposes them to restrictive social norms. Additionally, domestic responsibilities limit adolescent girls’ time in school and educational achievement, in turn curtailing their ability to enter the labor force. With 60 percent of the total population of Africa under the age of 25, investing in empowering adolescent girls is critical to accelerate economic growth and reduce intergenerational poverty.
Top Policy Lessons in Agriculture
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-04-22) World Bank
In Africa, agriculture is vital for employment and food security. Despite women contributing 40 percent of agricultural labor, they face barriers leading to significant gender gaps in productivity. Closing these gaps could unlock substantial economic gains, potentially boosting Nigeria's GDP by up to US$8.1 billion. Factors hindering female farmers include caregiving responsibilities, limited access to resources, and social norms. Impact evaluation evidence from the Africa Gender Innovation Lab (GIL) points toward policy solutions that can address many of these constraints and help female farmers reach their full potential, ultimately contributing to the broader economic development of the continent.
From Collateral to Cashflow: Expanding Access to Finance for Nigeria’s Female Business Owners
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-04-15) Gruver, Ariel; Koroknay-Palicz, Tricia; Papineni, Sreelakshmi; Shaikh, Sarmad; Zottel, Siegfried
Women in Nigeria are starting and growing businesses at a remarkable rate offering a vast untapped market for business lending. The World Bank, through its Nigeria Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi), partnered with the Development Bank of Nigeria (DBN) and two commercial banks in Nigeria – Access Bank and Sterling Bank – to develop innovative credit solutions that expand access to finance for women entrepreneurs. This case study summarizes key lessons from this work, including an initial diagnostic; an assessment of demand for business loans; analysis of SMEs who applied to and/or received Access Bank cashflow loans; and administrative data from Access Bank’s cashflow loan program. Our objective is to provide insights into the successes and challenges of disbursing loans to women-led SMEs (WSMEs) in Nigeria. This research is being conducted in partnership with the World Bank’s Africa Gender Innovation Lab (GIL), which is also carrying out an impact evaluation that will capture how cashflow-based lending impacts male- vs female-led firms’ access to credit and business performance.
Enterprising Women: A Decade of Learning from Ethiopia’s Women Entrepreneurship Development Project (WEDP)
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-04-03) Buehren, Niklas; Papineni, Sreelakshmi; Rawlins, Marlon; Weis, Toni
Beginning in 2012, Ethiopia’s first ever women-entrepreneur focused line of credit was established through the Women Entrepreneurship Development Project (WEDP). WEDP provides finance and business training for growth-oriented urban women entrepreneurs in Ethiopia with an aim to boost business earnings and employment. Over the ten years since inception, WEDP has expanded to operate across 18 Ethiopian cities, registering 60,000 women entrepreneurs into the program. As of February 2024, WEDP has provided more than 25,000 loans, and business training to over 30,000 women entrepreneurs. WEDP has also contributed to a wealth of learning and innovation, including research in partnership with the World Bank’s Gender Innovation Lab (GIL), and the Innovations in Financing Women Entrepreneurs (IFWE) project supported by Global Affairs Canada (GAC). In this brief the authors highlight key results from impact evaluations that were embedded into the WEDP operation and provide details of some of the innovations being tested.
Schoolgirls Not Brides: Secondary Education as a Shield Against Child Marriage
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-02-12) Giacobino, Hélène; Huillery, Elise; Michel, Bastien; Sage, Mathilde
Child marriage is recognized as a major burden in low-income countries, with severe consequences on women’s life trajectories. It is particularly pervasive in Niger, where middle school enrollment for girls is low, and dropouts are high. In the context of a multi-sectoral World Bank project, researchers evaluated the impact of a three-year intervention eliminating the financial and logistical barriers for girls admitted to middle school. Offering adolescent girls from vulnerable households in rural Niger scholarships and tutoring upon admission to middle school improved educational outcomes and wellbeing. Girls that received the program were 53 percent less likely to have dropped out of school at the time of follow up. They also reported a higher degree of life satisfaction. Importantly, there is no evidence that the positive effects on beneficiaries have been at the expense of non-beneficiaries. The program was effective in postponing girls’ marriage or engagement. Girls who received a scholarship program were 49 percent less likely to be married in the summer following their third year of middle school and 30 percent less likely to be engaged. The intervention raised girls’ educational and professional aspirations for themselves as well as parents’ aspirations for their daughter, plausibly due to changes in girls’ human capital and preferences. These results suggest that the intervention’s effects are likely to last beyond the mere duration of the scholarship.
Breaking the Cycle of Intimate-partner Violence: Harm Reduction by Engaging Men in the Democratic Republic of Congo
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-11-28) Gurbuz Cuneo, Alev; Falb, Kathryn; Kabeya, Rocky; Koussoubé, Estelle; Pierotti, Rachael S.; Vaillant, Julia
Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a global problem and a widespread issue in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where nationally more than one third of women have reported experiencing physical or sexual violence in the past year (2013-2014 DHS). The Africa Gender Innovation Lab (GIL) tested the effectiveness of the Engaging Men through Accountable Practice (EMAP) program, a male-only discussion group intervention which aimed at preventing intimate partner violence (IPV) and promoting more egalitarian gender relations. EMAP was implemented by the International Rescue Committee (IRC). New analyses of the study data paint a nuanced picture of the impact of the intervention. The authors find that among men who were the most physically violent at baseline, the EMAP program was effective at reducing the probability and severity of IPV perpetration. Although zero violence is a necessary and critical goal when promoting gender equality, these results reinforce the importance of measuring the contribution of policies and programs to reduce IPV’s occurrence, in addition to measuring effects on primary prevention and cessation of violence.
Engaging Men for Women’s Economic Empowerment: Overview of the Evidence
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-10-02) Pierotti, Rachael; Delavallade, Clara; Kaur Brar, Rajdev
Promoting women’s socioeconomic empowerment means increasing women’s control over the resources and decisions that are important for their well-being. Achieving these goals requires engaging men, since men often have influence over the lives of women in t heir households and communities. This overview examines evidence on the effectiveness of three different types of approaches that have been tested: Adding an engaging men intervention to complement a program designed to support women’s individual economic activities: Studies of these interventions show mixed results. Some have had success while others highlight the risk that this type of intervention could reduce women’s autonomy; Complementing support for household production or consumption with programming that encourages cooperative management or joint planning: These types of interventions are promising, especially for increasing women’s role in the management of household resources, although they have had limited impact on women’s individual-level economic outcomes; and Encouraging men to recognize or enhance their wives’ rights to ownership of important assets: There is very limited research available on this category of intervention, although available evidence is promising. Additional research in other contexts is necessary.
Gender Gaps in Agriculture Productivity and Public Spending in Nigeria
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-09-25) World Bank
Women farmers produce 30 percent less per hectare than their male counterparts. Among various factors, there are three key drivers of gender gaps in agriculture productivity in Nigeria: women use fewer inputs and have limited participation in extension services, farm less-valuable crops, and hire less productive labor. The four value chains receiving the largest budget allocations are among those with the lowest participation of women farmers. These gaps can be closed via adjustments at fundamental stages of budget allocation and policy formulation. This technical note aims to analyze the gender dimensions of participation, input distribution, and budget allocation across various crop value chains supported by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD). Specifically, the underlying analysis aims to (i) examine women’s participation in the crop value chains for which FMARD provides input support; (ii) quantify the gender gaps in agricultural input use, extension services, and labor productivity; (iii) examine women’s participation and inputs use against budget allocations; and (iv) thereby, formulate recommendations for increasing fiscal space and investments to close the agricultural gender productivity gaps in Nigeria.
Phone-Based Financial Heuristics Training for Female Retailers in Ethiopia
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-09-01) Abebe, Girum; Asheber, Tsedey; Hailemicheal, Adiam Hagos; Weis, Toni
A recent review of evidence on the impacts of business training indicates the need to develop alternatives to formal classroom training, simpler rules-of-thumb-type trainings for less sophisticated firms, and business trainings that can be scaled up affordably. In partnership with ideas42, the World Bank’s Africa Gender Innovation Lab (GIL) piloted a heuristics (rules-of-thumb)-based business training in Ethiopia that delivers easy-to-remember and -implement financial and business practices. The training was designed for small-scale female retailers and is delivered by phone using prerecorded messages and interactive voice response technology. A key motivation was to make the program accessible to women who are busy tending their families and shops, and who may have limited ability to attend classroom-based trainings.
Taking Control: How Financial Inclusion Impacts Labor Supply
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-07-13) Carranza, Eliana; Donald, Aletheia; Grosset, Florian; Kaur, Supreet
Social and familial financial transfers are common in low-income communities and have positive social effects. To address this challenge, the authors designed and implemented a financial innovation to lower redistributive pressure among female cashew-processing workers: a blocked savings account into which gains in workers’ earnings get transferred. Take-up of the private account was substantially higher at 60 percent, compared to 14 percent for the non-private account. Being offered a private account increased workers’ attendance by 9.7 percent and earnings by 11.4 percent. The estimates imply that workers face a 9-23 percent social tax rate, and that the welfare benefits of informal redistribution may come at the cost of depressing labor supply and productivity.