Algeria
Egypt
Israel
Jordan
Lebanon
Libya
Morocco
Palestine *
Syria *
TunisiaWomen’s Economic Empowerment in the Southern Mediterranean: Enhancing Women Entrepreneurs’ Financial Inclusion and Access to Finance in the Digital Age
Countries covered:
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Algeria
-
Egypt
-
Jordan
-
Lebanon
-
Libya
-
Morocco
-
Palestine *
-
Tunisia
Overview
The EU-OECD project “Enhancing women entrepreneurs’ financial inclusion and access to finance in the Southern Mediterranean” aims to boost women’s economic empowerment by promoting an enabling policy and regulatory framework for women’s financial inclusion and access to finance, notably for women entrepreneurs. The project engages policy-makers, financial institutions as well as women entrepreneurs’ networks, fostering multi-stakeholders dialogue and peer-exchanges for policy and regulatory reforms.
Objectives
The project objective is to promote an enabling policy and regulatory framework for women entrepreneurs’ financial inclusion and access to finance.
This will be achieved through:
- Enhanced awareness and engagement of policy makers and financial institutions through regional multi-stakeholder policy dialogues;
- Strengthened capacities of policy-makers, financial institutions and women entrepreneurs’ networks to develop sound policies and strategies;
- Policy recommendations and guidance for their implementation – based on identified action gaps and good practices.
Actions in brief
The EU-OECD project addresses policy and regulatory gaps in women’s access to finance and financial inclusion in the Southern Neighbourhood region. It focuses on key policy and regulatory aspects of women entrepreneurs’ financial inclusion such as: access to finance programmes for entrepreneurs and SMEs, legal and regulatory frameworks for entrepreneurship financing, financial literacy policies, financial consumer protection frameworks, and other types of public support for women entrepreneurs. It also takes into account the opportunities and challenges of digitalisation for financial inclusion.
This regional project engages policy-makers, financial institutions and women entrepreneurs’ networks from eight partners in the region, through multi-stakeholders policy dialogue, capacity-building workshops, peer-exchange and peer-visits. A network of champions from the three stakeholders groups will disseminate and advocate for women’s financial inclusion, locally, in the region and beyond.
This initiative is part of the EU’s broader regional support to women’s economic empowerment in the Southern Neighbourhood, and is complemented by the project Inclusive NISSA’ (COSPE) aiming at promoting gender-sensitive financial tools and building capacities of women entrepreneurs’ to make use of them. Both projects contribute to the Regional Team Europe Initiative on Job through Trade and Investment in the Southern Neigbhourhood, and to the implementation of the Union for the Mediterranean Ministerial Declaration on Strengthening the Role of Women in Society (2022).
