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Good practice Imported

Women Mean Business — TechnoServe's Coaching and Mentoring Programme for Women Entrepreneurs in Kampala

Uganda · Kampala · See the Uganda profile · See the Kampala profile

Evidence: Randomised controlled trial Top 29% 76/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

A randomised evaluation of TechnoServe's classroom training, coaching and mentoring for 806 women-owned firms across five Ugandan towns found 22% higher revenue and 15% higher profits, with gains dampened in neighbourhoods where competition among trained firms was strongest.

1297 firms
Eligible applicant firms
806 firms
Firms invited to participate (treatment)
491 firms
Comparison group firms
22 %
Revenue increase
15 %
Profit increase
0.52 SD
Business-practices index improvement
two-thirds
Classroom-training attendance rate
62 %
Business-coach engagement rate
51 %
Mentor engagement rate
16 months
Programme duration
133 neighbourhoods
Paired neighbourhoods (spillover design)
Women Mean Business — TechnoServe's Coaching and Mentoring Programme for Women Entrepreneurs in Kampala

Details

Maturity
Pilot
Promoter
TechnoServe; Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA)
Period
2011–2013
Keywords
women's entrepreneurship, business coaching, SME mentoring

Context

Between 2011 and 2013, TechnoServe and Innovations for Poverty Action ran Women Mean Business, a 16-month coaching and mentoring programme for women entrepreneurs across Kampala, Entebbe, Jinja, Mukono and Wakiso.

Objectives

The programme combined classroom training in financial management, marketing and customer service with individualised business-plan coaching and mentoring, aiming to improve business practices and financial performance among women-owned firms.

Activities

Of 1,297 eligible applicants, 806 firms were invited to participate and 491 served as a randomised comparison group; the design also paired 133 neighbourhoods to measure spillover effects on nearby untrained businesses. Two-thirds of invited entrepreneurs attended classroom training, 62% met with a business coach and 51% engaged a mentor.

Results

Participating firms earned 22% higher revenue and 15% higher profits on average, and scored 0.52 standard deviations higher on an index of recommended business practices such as written business plans, record-keeping and customer service. In neighbourhoods with a higher share of trained firms, overall revenues rose but prices fell and profit gains shrank as trained firms competed more directly with one another.

Conclusions

The randomised evaluation shows coaching-and-mentoring programmes can meaningfully lift women-owned firm performance, but gains can be partly zero-sum at the local market level -- a consideration for cities scaling similar programmes citywide rather than piloting them selectively.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Medium (€50k–€500k)
Time to results
Medium (1–3 years)
Staffing & skills
TechnoServe (implementer), Innovations for Poverty Action (independent evaluator), Business coaches and mentors

Conditions for success

  • Combining classroom training with individualised coaching and mentoring rather than training alone
  • Randomised comparison-group design enabling causal measurement
  • Neighbourhood-paired design to detect spillover/competition effects

Common failure modes

  • Gains can be partly zero-sum in local markets: where more firms in a neighbourhood were trained, prices fell and profit gains shrank due to direct competition among trained firms

Commonly funded by

Philanthropic / foundation funding

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Replication kit

Reusable artefacts from this practice — as published by their sources.

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Data sources

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