Publication: Enterprising Women: A Decade of Learning from Ethiopia’s Women Entrepreneurship Development Project (WEDP)
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2024-04-03
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2024-04-03
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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.
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“Buehren, Niklas; Papineni, Sreelakshmi; Rawlins, Marlon; Weis, Toni. 2024. Enterprising Women: A Decade of Learning from Ethiopia’s Women Entrepreneurship Development Project (WEDP). © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/41365 License: CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO.”
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