| Abstract: | Women are becoming increasingly important in the socio-economic development of both developed and developing economies. Female entrepreneurship represents a vast untapped source of innovation, job creation and economic growth in the developing world. Women’s Entrepreneurship Development Project (WEDP) is a $50 million IDA investment lending operation designed to address the key constraints for growth-oriented women entrepreneurs in Ethiopia. Its objective is to increase the earnings and employment of micro and small enterprises owned or partly owned by women entrepreneurs in Ethiopia. It targets growth oriented women entrepreneurs, providing credit as well as entrepreneurship training/business development services. The purpose of the study is to investigate the impact of women entrepreneurship development project (WEDP) loans on the socio- economic development of women entrepreneurs in the case study of Vision Fund Micro Finance Institution, Addis Ababa branch. The study was used two groups of samples namely, experimental or treatment group and control group. A total of 220 samples are selected. 100 samples are used as treatment group from the total population size 419 and 120 are used as control group. Documentation, survey /Questionnaires, Focus Group Discussion (FGD), and Key Informants Interviews was used as a data collecting tools. Descriptive statistics and econometric model were applied for analyzing quantitative data. The contribution of WEDP is analyzed based on income, saving, expenditure for health, expenditure for children school, asset accumulation, decision making power, business management skills along with the strength and weakness of the project. The finding indicates that Vision Fund Microfinance WEDP has made positive contributions to the wellbeing of its client. However, all of Vision Fund Microfinance WEDP clients have already been involved in a business activity that can generate income for the repayment of the loan. The study revealed that the aim of WEDP to reach out the any growth oriented women entrepreneurs has not been achieved due to target problems. It was, again, uncovered that, microfinance try as much as possible to reduce the risk involved in giving out unsecured loans. One of their ways of trying to achieve this is by group lending which automatically sideline the poorest since the groups are formed based on the income level of the individual. |
