A business ecosystem fit for women’s empowerment: The SheTrades Accelerator Programme

Since late 2021, the SheTrades Accelerator Programme, or STAP, has supported women-led businesses in the fast-growing fashion, accessories, and home décor sectors, along with the BSOs that these businesses rely on. The programme is active across Iraq, Jordan, Kenya, Lebanon, Senegal, and South Africa, with components that both recognize the shared challenges of women entrepreneurs in these countries, like gender bias or access to finance, while accounting for their different contexts and nuances.

To date, the program has served over 45 business support organizations and 440 women-led enterprises, thanks to the generous support of Germany’s Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). One of the programme’s big wins is that these BSOs now have a clearer understanding of where they need to adapt their services to account for their potential impacts on gender equality, and how.

One of the highlights in 2023, for instance, was a masterclass where 17 BSOs were guided on how to use the ITC Benchmarking Self-Assessment tool. A key aspect of this assessment was to evaluate the BSOs’ efforts and practices in advancing women’s empowerment and identifying areas for improvement. Based on the results of the self-assessment, each BSO received coaching so it could develop an action plan featuring specific objectives to improve its support to women-led businesses, while taking into account its respective capabilities, resources, needs, and priorities.

Additionally, participants benefited from in-person workshops aimed at addressing common weaknesses among the BSO group and engaged in peer-to-peer learning by sharing and learning from each other on gender responsive services and best practices.

Lynda Koske, Senior Product Development Officer at the Kenya Export Promotion and Branding Agency, told ITC that the training organizations like hers had received ‘has been very beneficial,’ crediting it for helping her team craft customized support for women-led businesses. Under the programme, BSOs have also received sector-specific ‘training of trainers’ classes and have reported that they are better equipped to apply a gender lens to their skills-building programs for small businesses.

Other examples of STAP in action include sector-specific trainings in English, Arabic, and Kurdish for young women entrepreneurs in Iraq and Jordan, giving them the chance to hone their business and entrepreneurial skills, develop strategies for accessing international markets, and design and develop their businesses further.

One of the programme’s foundational components is collaboration: not only does the STAP link up with other ITC programmes and projects, such as those devoted to youth and supporting Iraqi agribusinesses, but it also relies on partnerships with governments and other UN agencies, such as the International Organization for Migration or the International Telecommunication Union. The Iraq-based Station Foundation for Entrepreneurship and Jordan’s Garment Design & Training Services Centre have also played key roles in the project’s execution.

This collaboration is necessary so that the support BSOs and women-led businesses receive under the STAP account for the context in which beneficiaries live and work.

BSOs and entrepreneurs from the programme are now part of the ITC SheTrades.com online network, where they can continue accessing capacity-building and networking opportunities. BSOs from the programme have also joined ITC’s BSO Directory, which features over 600 organizations from over 150 countries. The programme also connects participating entrepreneurs to BSOs and, where applicable, SheTrades Hubs in Kenya and South Africa to ensure support can be sustained after the programme’s conclusion.