This brief from the World Bank Africa Gender Innovation Lab’s “Innovations in Financing Women Entrepreneurs Initiative” shares lessons from a digital mentoring program that targeted female entrepreneurs in Ethiopia’s Somali region. The MicroMentor digital mentoring platform is designed to increase social capital and business know-how via mentors to address one of the key drivers of gender gap profits between male and female entrepreneurs -- differences in the composition and extent of male versus female networks. Key takeaways offer that a purely online approach does not work, while tech-plus-touch approaches with in-person interactions and non-digital marketing can bolster the use of digital technologies that benefit women entrepreneurs. Read more.
Blog » Helping Female Entrepreneurs Access Digital Platforms: The Importance of a Tech-Plus-Touch Approach and Other Lessons Learned (2023)
Helping Female Entrepreneurs Access Digital Platforms: The Importance of a Tech-Plus-Touch Approach and Other Lessons Learned (2023)
This brief from the World Bank Africa Gender Innovation Lab’s “Innovations in Financing Women Entrepreneurs Initiative” shares lessons from a digital mentoring program that targeted female entrepreneurs in Ethiopia’s Somali region. The MicroMentor digital mentoring platform is designed to increase social capital and business know-how via mentors to address one of the key drivers of gender gap profits between male and female entrepreneurs -- differences in the composition and extent of male versus female networks. Key takeaways offer that a purely online approach does not work, while tech-plus-touch approaches with in-person interactions and non-digital marketing can bolster the use of digital technologies that benefit women entrepreneurs. Read more.