Advancing Women Enterprises in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

For women living in poor communities, financial independence can change the trajectory of their lives. A thriving micro and small enterprise sector can contribute significantly to this, yet most efforts to promote women’s entrepreneurship have not achieved sustainable change. A large and growing body of evidence suggests that shifting social and gender norms are essential to generate a transformative impact on women's entrepreneurship, and this has been largely absent from the range of relevant initiatives. In Ethiopia, despite significant investment, still, the women entrepreneurs largely experience barriers to skills, insufficient resource availability, and inadequate acceptance. As a result, the female entrepreneurs in this country struggle to reach viability to meet their goals and to achieve expected growth. This represents untapped potential for both the women and the Ethiopian economy. In this three-year project, CARE proposes to enhance 3,000 existing early-stage, women-led micro and small enterprises in the formal and informal sectors in urban Addis Ababa with the skills, finance and enabling environment needed to overcome barriers and achieve their business goals. The proposed project will engage with 3,000 active women entrepreneurs between the age of 18 -35 in both the formal and informal sector, plus a series of strategic partners, to achieve the following strategic objectives: SO1: Strengthen the skills and capacities of 3,000 women between the ages of 18-35 and improve their access to finance and capital. This will be delivered through business and life skills training, hard skills training, facilitating savings behaviour and improved access to financial services; SO2: Address harmful social norms that restrict women entrepreneurs and strengthen relations at the household and community levels to become more open and supportive of female entrepreneurs and female-led enterprises. This will be delivered via engagement and sensitization activities including Social Action and Analysis (SAA), CARE’s proven community-led approach to bringing about social norms change, as well as CARE’s Male Engagement Strategy (MES); SO3: Create an enabling social and regulatory context for women to develop their enterprise and participate in decisions that affect their enterprise, household and community. This will be delivered through strategic engagement and capacity building of key actors in both the public and private sector, including local government institutions and financial service providers, as well as collaboration with inspirational leaders to conduct advocacy at various levels. Insights and activities will integrate with CARE’s Seizing the Moment advocacy project. CARE’s approach will leverage the approaches and insights applied and refined through Women4Women, our successful female entrepreneurship project that was funded by the H&M Foundation (February 2015-September 2018) and resulted in significant improvement in the income and savings of participating women. It will also contribute insights and data to our current system strengthening project with DFID, Irish Aid and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in which we are working with MoWYC to research, advocate and influence for an improved policy framework, including an updated National Gender Policy. CARE’s global framework for Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) provides the basis for the project’s Theory of Change, which predicates transformation on three pillars of agency, relationships and structure. By the end of the project, 3,000 women will have developed the necessary skills, gain access to financial resources and establish relationships to enable them to run financially viable businesses and meet their own business goals.