Women's Entrepreneurship Development in Yemen: Public-Private Partnership

The Small and Medium Enterprise Promotion Service (SMEPS), Yemen’s national agency promoting small and micro-enterprises and a subsidiary of the Social Fund for Development, recently embarked on an initiative to economically empower women and to facilitate their access to microfinance by building their capacity to open a business or to improve existing ones. It entered into a contractual agreement with the Soul for Development Organization, the SEEDS Institute, the Bena’a Consultancy and Training Institute and the Impact Institute, to deliver business management training. This training targeted existing and potential women entrepreneurs in order to build further links with microfinance institutions. Given ILO’s experience in enterprise development in general and women entrepreneurship specifically, SMEPS approached the ILO to extend its technical assistance in this field.