Project Name：Capacity Building Project for Microfinance Ecosystem Focusing on Grassroots Women in Eswatini

Project status：Completed projects

Cooperating Country：Africa, Kingdom of Eswatini

Project Description：

The Government of the Kingdom of Eswatini (GoE) intends to increase the people’s accessibility and usage of financial services and products at the grassroots level. Following the NFIS, the focal points of this Technical Assistance Project (TA Project) are the grassroots women entrepreneurs and the microfinance institutions (MFIs) who are interested in providing services to the target group. The Project will provide a series of training courses to the staff and managers of the MFIs that will be selected for training in the project, as well as consultancy services for institutional capacity enhancement. The project aims to help grassroots entrepreneurs gain a better understanding of financial management and marketing, and become more bankable entrepreneurs. It is expected that by the end of the Project, the income and production from business ventures of the participating grassroots entrepreneurs (mainly women) will increase, thus contributing to women's economic empowerment as well as financial independence.

Project No：TT-240-2020-027

Implementation Start Date：2020-10-20

Implementation End Date：2023-10-19

Project Objectives：Enhance ability of community-based MFIs to provide microfinance services to grassroots women. At the end of the TA project, grassroots women entrepreneurs will have a deeper understanding of access, usage, and management of financial services, as well as innovative skills of doing business effectively and efficiently.

Executing Agency：

Taiwan Technical Mission in Kingdom of Eswatini / Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Trade Kingdom of Eswatini 

Project Performance：

1. Counseling women in the handicraft training center and Manzini handicraft product trading market to carry out product innovation, and through the e-commerce platform and in cooperation with local art creation workshops for physical store exhibition and sales, the products include dozens of items such as beads, wood carvings, straw weaving, and cultural and creative products.

2. 12 cooperative organizations (SACCOs) have been counseled. In 2022, the asset scale will increase by 16.07%, the total equity will increase by 39.54%, and the total liabilities (member deposits) will increase by 8.61%.

3. Regarding the number of members of cooperative organizations (SACCOs), in 2019, there were 2,232 male members and 16,647 female members. The total number of members was 18,879, and females accounted for 88.18%. In 2022, the number of male members is 2,937, and the number of female members is 18,693. The total number of members is 21,630, and females account for 86.42%

Project Contact：Wang,Yen-Chih

Phone：+886-2-2888-6054

E-mail：y.j.wang@icdf.org.tw