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Good practice Imported

DER/FJ — Senegal's Fast-Track Fund for Youth and Women Entrepreneurs

Senegal · Dakar · See the Senegal profile · See the Dakar profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 83% 52/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

A presidential fund gives Senegalese youth and women entrepreneurs fast digital nanocredit, grants and equity; by 2024 it had disbursed 45bn FCFA in nanocredit to 160,000 people, but figures are self-reported and one reviewer flagged weak performance monitoring.

45 billion FCFA
Nanocredit disbursed (2018-Feb 2024)
71 %
Nanocredit repayment rate (Feb 2024)
115 billion FCFA
Cumulative DER/FJ investment since 2018 (2018-2024)
DER/FJ — Senegal's Fast-Track Fund for Youth and Women Entrepreneurs

Details

Maturity
Established
Promoter
Délégation Générale à l'Entrepreneuriat Rapide des Femmes et des Jeunes (DER/FJ), Presidency of Senegal
Period
2018–present
Keywords
youth and women entrepreneurship, nanocredit, SME financing, financial inclusion

Context

Senegal's Delegation Generale a l'Entrepreneuriat Rapide des Femmes et des Jeunes (DER/FJ) launched in April 2018 with initial capitalisation of about 30 billion FCFA (~$50 million), offering micro-grants, incubation funding, equity and low-interest loans, plus a digital 'nanocredit' line (50,000-1,000,000 FCFA) processed in about three weeks for entrepreneurs under 40 and women.

Results

By February 2024, the nanocredit line had disbursed 45 billion FCFA to 160,000 entrepreneurs (71% repayment, ~5% default). Across all DER/FJ programmes since 2018, cumulative investment reached about 115 billion FCFA against 500,000 applications requesting 520 billion FCFA.

Conclusions

An independent commentator quoted by ICTworks raised concerns about the absence of public monitoring discussion and disbursements clustering in politically favourable areas ahead of elections; the one beneficiary survey found was conducted by DER/FJ on its own recipients.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Very high (> €5M)
Time to results
Long (> 3 years)
Staffing & skills
Delegation Generale a l'Entrepreneuriat Rapide des Femmes et des Jeunes

Conditions for success

  • Independent monitoring and evaluation of disbursement outcomes
  • Geographically balanced disbursement not tied to electoral cycles

Common failure modes

  • No independent evaluation of job creation, survival or productivity effects
  • Concerns raised about disbursements clustering in politically favourable areas

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

Indicative funding routes for practices of this type — always check each programme's current calls and eligibility rules.

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

Attachments

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