Support to Women Entrepreneurs

The project specifically seeks to: (i) Increase access to information and trade support services: Small business owners (predominantly women) state that the several challenges including capacity needs, lack of professional services/skills, access to market information are hindrance to their ability to trade. The project will aim to provide capacity in terms of skills and knowledge to enable women in selected value chains to trade formally, improve access finance and markets. (ii)Increase trade value for women: According to studies, women trade in commodities with little or no value addition and are therefore disadvantaged as their returns on trade remain low. The project’s objective is to support women traders to access high value markets through trading in clusters/cooperatives and other groupings that support consolidation of resources and collective bargaining for cost reduction. The project will provide institutional capacity support to the Chamber of Women to enable it to provide much needed stewardship to women traders. The project with be implemented though a grant to Rwanda Women’s Chamber who are a national umbrella /apex representing women entrepreneurs.