Overview
The project - Promoting women's empowerment for inclusive and sustainable industrial development in the MENA region, phase II (PWE II) aimed at enhancing access to finance, market integration, and strategic value chain development for women's empowerment across Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, and Tunisia. It focused on five key outcomes: creating an enabling environment for women's entrepreneurship, reducing financial barriers, improving market access, increasing product/service quality and quantity in selected gender-sensitive value chains, and ensuring effective project management and monitoring.
Despite initial plans for collaboration with UN Women and FAO, UNIDO became the sole implementing agency. Consequently, the project centered on its regional component (Outcome 1: Building a more conducive environment for women entrepreneurship development) funded by the Italian Government, with a pilot project in Tunisia funded by the Government of Monaco. The Tunisian pilot aimed to create market opportunities for MSMEs in natural cosmetics and para-pharmaceuticals through enhanced management, packaging, marketing strategies, and business partnerships.
The independent terminal evaluation, conducted in 2024, found that the PWE II project successfully addressed some significant challenges for women's entrepreneurship in the
MENA region, demonstrating its high relevance to national needs and priorities. It effectively generated and shared knowledge, raised awareness among stakeholders, built capacity, and showcased successful market access strategies in the Tunisian pilot. Despite limited financial and human resources, the project was managed efficiently, optimizing resource use and cost-sharing for joint activities.
The sustainability of the pilot project in Tunisia appears likely, but broader regional results face uncertainty due to political and economic instability and weak stakeholder ownership in countries with minimal project activities. Progress towards empowering women in the MENA region remains limited, hindered by slow behavioural changes and regulatory reforms. The project addressed gender-specific gaps and needs, providing valuable data and information through targeted surveys and studies. Environmental and social impacts were considered in the selection of gender-sensitive value chains and the pilot incubation program in Tunisia, aiming to formalize women's work and reduce precariousness.
Recommendations for future projects include securing formal commitments and budgets from co-implementers prior to the start of the project, capitalizing on results and lessons learned from women's entrepreneurship projects implemented in the MENA region, involving national actors in regional governance structures, adopting an integrated and individualized approach for final beneficiaries (women entrepreneurs), utilizing risk matrices and maintaining constant adaptability and flexibility in the face of challenges.
