From Learning to Earning : An Impact Evaluation of the Digital Opportunity Trust Entrepreneurship Training
The results from this study confirm that a more innovative (non-cognitive skills based) type of business training can support women’s businesses
Abstract
Business and entrepreneurship training programs have become popular interventions intended to boost the profits of small businesses around the world. In October-November 2014 baseline data on 800 female entrepreneurs in Mekelle was collected. 400 of these female entrepreneurs were randomly assigned to the treatment group and offered to participate in the Digital Opportunity Trust (DOT) training immediately and the other 400 entrepreneurs were assigned to the control group and had to wait a minimum of 12 months before being offered the training. The first round of training was offered to the treatment group from January 2015 in half-day sessions over a period of 15 to 20 days at no cost to the participants, so that entrepreneurs could complete the training while continuing to attend to their businesses on a daily basis. From January to March 2016, approximately one year after the treatment group was offered the training, the research team followed-up with 729 female entrepreneurs of the original sample. The results in this policy note are intention-to-treat (ITT) impacts, i.e. the impact of being offered training, using the midline survey data. The preliminary results from this study confirm that a more innovative (non-cognitive skills based) type of business training can more effectively support women’s businesses.
This work is part of the Closing the Gender Gap in Africa: evaluating new policies and programmes for women’s economic empowerment programme
Citation
Alibhai, Salman; Buehren, Niklas; Papineni, Sreelakshmi. 2016. From Learning to Earning : An Impact Evaluation of the Digital Opportunity Trust Entrepreneurship Training. Gender Innovation Lab Policy Brief; No. 17. World Bank, Washington, DC.