Impact Evaluation of In-Person versus App-Based Training for Women Entrepreneurs in Ethiopia 2023

The World Bank’s Women Entrepreneurship Development Project (WEDP) has registered more than 40,000 women business owners in its Management Information System (MIS), out of which about 18,000 are based in Addis Ababa. To construct our sampling frame, we first conducted a screening interview with almost all the women entrepreneurs based in Addis Ababa to determine their eligibility and interest in the e-learning app via telephone. Specifically, the eligibility criteria were that the individual must: i) have access to and know how to use a smartphone; ii) have access to internet; iii) have completed high school education; iv) be a business owner or active manager; v) have 30 or fewer employees in their business and; (vi) be able to understand either English or Amharic. 6036 women ultimately completed the application interview.

Respondents meeting the eligibility criteria were asked at the end of the screening if they were interested in a free of cost business training mobile app. If they said yes, they were then invited to attend information sessions with a travel compensation. Information sessions were held every month for four months from March 2023 to June 2023 to reach a sample size of 2000 women. In every session that women attended (which ranged from 8 people attending to 40), women were first given a brief orientation about the experiment and randomization process and were then asked to complete a baseline survey on their phone. Once the survey was completed by participants, they were invited one by one to pick a token from an urn. Moderators placed equal numbers of four different tokens representing the three treatment groups and one control group.

The four groups were: a) Access to the e-learning app only (N=495); b) Access to the e-learning app + networking (N=502); c) Access to an in-person training (N=520); and d) Access to the e-learning app after the last follow-up survey (control) (N=483). Once women were randomized, only women assigned to receiving access to the e-learning app were given an orientation on the app, where moderators also helped every woman download the app and log in. Women assigned to the in-person training were told that they would receive more details on when and where the in-person business training would happen.