• News
  • Tech Voices
  • Use Cases
  • About
  • digital-africa.co
  • FR
Menu
  • News
  • Tech Voices
  • Use Cases
  • About
  • digital-africa.co
  • FR
Published date:
  • 12 November 2020
Author: Digital Africa

Ethiopia - An application to support women entrepreneurs

Ethiopia | Mobile app | WEDP | Women's entrepreneurship | World Bank
The World Bank has set up an application to help Ethiopian women entrepreneurs improve their performance - Photo credit World Bank - RR

In Ethiopia, an app is helping women entrepreneurs during the Covid-19 crisis. The application uses data from selling points to generate information and help those companies improve their operations, maximize their profits, and ease credit access.

The Covid-19 pandemic created a strong demand for companies worldwide - micro, small and medium-sized companies-. The MSMEs stay the main engine of economic development, innovation, and employment but work with lower operating margins. Opportunities destined for women entrepreneurs are most inferior to the ones for men.

94% of companies constating fewer sales than a year ago

Women beneficiaries of the WED program - Photo credit wedp - RR

In Ethiopia, an answer has been proposed through the Women entrepreneurship development project (WEDP) that supports 38 000 micro and small companies owned by women and focused on growth by offering them training and access to loans. Since the launch of WEDP in 2012, companies participating in the program increase their incomes by 67% and their hiring by 58%. WEDP employed near 90 000 workers, of which 61% are women.

Nevertheless, most of the companies of WEDP are companies where contact with consumers is essential, like grocery, clothing shops, coffee, restaurant, beauty parlors. While the pandemic was advancing, the demand fell spectacularly, 94% of companies constating fewer sales than a year ago. To help them protect employments, a team comprised of Africa Gender Innovation Lab of the World Bank, the Finance, Competitiveness & Innovation Global Practice, and the ITS Technology and Innovation Lab (ITSTI) reunited to define digital solutions to help women entrepreneurs during the crisis.

From this collaboration is born an innovative idea: a mobile application exploiting companies' selling point data and generates commercial information, collects transactions, to help companies to improve their operations, maximize their profits and access to emergency loans.

Focused recommendations to monitor and optimize sales

The result is "a company software." In other words, an application that uses emerging technologies to realize commercial analysis that the seller can use to optimize its sales and operations while adapting them to support small companies owned by women in the retail industry in Ethiopia. The application is conceived to be used on any smartphone and connects with Wifi or by linking a cable to the entrepreneurs' cash register. Ethiopian companies earning more than 100 000 ETB (3000 USD) per year have to use a cash register, as this toll is adaptable. Once connected, the application extracts transaction data to generate information about the sale model, client frequency, and high-value products. The application then gives some targeted recommendations such as "increase banana's stock by 30% in June" to help entrepreneurs to monitor and optimize their sales and incomes, the World Bank explains.

The application uses point-of-sale data and generates insight to help businesses improve their operations, maximize profits and facilitate access to credit - Photo credit Brookings Institution - RR

The app also gives companies the possibility to interact with their clients and their company's network, allowing price comparison in real-time. It also integrates exchanges elements, peer-to-peer learning, and access to financial services.

Similar post

Wingu.africa inaugurates a Hyperscale Data Center in Ethiopia

Published date : 10 Feb 2021
Author : Digital Africa

Pan-African Data Center operator wingu.africa will set up a Hyperscale Data Center in the Addis Ababa ICT Park in Ethiopia. The beginning of an expansion in this country which is matched only by its ambition to conquer even more markets.

Read more

Is a digitalized Africa a driver of women's inclusion?

Published date : 16 Oct 2020
Author : Digital Africa

On the 2nd of October, Digital Africa organized a round table on the theme: Women, Tech & Inclusion, perspectives from Europe and Africa. Attended by five high-level panelists, the debate focused on gender and digital issues, exploring ways to foster women’s inclusion into the real economy thanks to digital tools.

Read more

Faster, cheapest, more accessible... The African champions of connectivity

Published date : 15 Sep 2020
Author : Digital Africa

If Africa stays far away from other continents concerning access to the Internet, it wins some places in subscription prices. However, it looses in the speed connexion ranking.

Read more

Resilient Digital Africa

©2020 Digital Africa - Credits & Legal Information - Contact us

Get African tech ecosystems’ news and commons (training, calls, funding…):

digital-africa.co
  • FR
  • EN

We are using cookies to give you the best experience on our website.

You can find out more about which cookies we are using or switch them off in settings.

Resilient Digital Africa
Powered by  GDPR Cookie Compliance
Privacy Overview

This site uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best possible user experience. The information about cookies is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognizing you when you return to our website and helping our team understand which sections of the site you find most interesting and useful.

Strictly necessary cookies

This option must be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

Mandatory cookies for the proper functioning of the website :

  • confidentiality preferences
  • language's selection
  • connection parameter (if connected))

If you deactivate this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that each time you visit this site, you will need to enable or disable cookies again.

Google Analytics

This site uses Google Analytics to collect anonymous information such as the number of visitors to the site and the most popular pages.

Keeping this cookie enabled helps us improve our website.

Please activate the cookies strictly necessary first so that we can save your preferences!

Facebook Pixel

This website uses the Facebook pixel in order to keep you informed of discounts and other promotions.

Please activate the cookies strictly necessary first so that we can save your preferences!