Enterprise Partners worked to enable investment in small and medium enterprises (SMEs), large enterprises, along with providing them with more credit and equity, to create jobs across various sectors. Through our interventions, we diversified sources of capital for enterprises and helped financial institutions build technical capacity to suit a range of markets.

We promoted foreign direct investment and private equity capital, especially in priority agro-industrial sectors. We generated over £160 million of new investments in different sectors, and 48,000 jobs in SMEs and large enterprises.

Theory of change

Markets

Private Capital Advisory Facility (PCAF)

Ethiopia’s private enterprise is sustainably growing at an accelerated pace. Private sector development can be catalyzed through investments and allow Ethiopia to achieve the goals set in the Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP II). However, attracting global investors requires a conducive environment for private equity in Ethiopia. The private equity market in Ethiopia is still at infant stage, making equity investors face a number of challenges including the lack of foreign currency, dealing with a closed financial service sector and other complexities that come with family-owned businesses

Enterprise Partners worked to create a vibrant investment advisory market to improve deal facilitation functions, contribute to ease-of-doing business for investors and create awareness of the private equity opportunities in Ethiopia. PCAF is a project set up to develop a vibrant advisory market, thereby increasing private equity investments in Ethiopia. Established through a partnership with Zemen Bank, the project fund allocated USD 50,000 per company for the purpose of investment advisory. Contingent on the investment cause, up to 50% of the fund per company was transferred as grants, the remaining is an interest-free collateralized loan depending on the need of the company.

Young Professional Development Programme (YPDP)

The purpose of the Young Professional Development Programme was to build the human capacity of public agency, the Ethiopian Investment Commission (EIC) from the ground up. The pilot was designed to specifically support EIC in developing its human capital to be able to deal with the increasing number of domestic and foreign investment interests efficiently and effectively by equipping dynamic young graduates with skills, knowledge and applied work experience to improve the service delivery and performance.

The programme not only played a role in making employment in the civil service seem more attractive, it also contributed to reducing unemployment among college graduates.

Looking at the recent status of the young professionals, 41% are in leadership positions. Almost 100% in a job with the average wage 10 times the average wage of the same professionals’ recent graduates. 

Enterprise Partners continued to monitor and measure their career evolution and will do so beyond 2020.

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