Recognizing that women have less access to productive resources such as land, credit and education due to cultural barriers, and that they stand on uneven ground, the SME Development Policy specifies that gender mainstreaming will be enhanced in all initiatives pertaining to SME development, and outlines the need for specific measures that promote women’s entrepreneurship. These are stated as follows:
• facilitate SME service providers to design special programmes for women entrepreneurs and disadvantaged groups; and • identify factors inhibiting women and disadvantaged groups from going into business and design programmes to address those factors.
Although by November 2003 specific strategies for addressing women’s enterprise development had not been drafted, according to a key informant, the implementation plan will take a sectoral approach supported by the rationale, “if you want to grow the Tanzanian economy, you have to develop the food sector, and if you want to do that, then you have to develop women”.
To complement the Government’s focus on women entrepreneurs, the MIT-SME Section is also the implementing partner for the ILO’s WEDGE30 Programme in Tanzania. One officer’s time is dedicated to leading projects to promote women’s entrepreneurship, building capacity in associations of women entrepreneurs, and implementing gender mainstreaming workshops for government officials, donor organizations and BDS providers. One of the key outputs from the gender streaming initiative is the FAMOS (female and male operated small enterprises) Check, a gender audit tool that is being used in training workshops to sensitize organizations in dealing directly with SMEs, and to assist them in monitoring how specific interventions are reaching and impacting both women and men.31 The proposed SME Development Data Bank will contain information on sex-disaggregated data in SME interventions as reported by stakeholders.
In their review of development partner and donor efforts, Olomi and Nchimbi (2002) concluded that SME policies and programmes of the past have differed in the extent to which they addressed gender issues. Some have shown the need to address women’s needs but fell short of specific strategies, while others did come up with specific strategies. UDEC later carried out a survey of donor-supported programmes on behalf of the Africa Project Development Facility (APDF), and in February 2003 released a directory of donor-supported SME and private sector programmes (Olomi, Baisi and Philemon, 2003).
It does not appear that a large proportion of donor attention has been placed on the business development and growth needs of women entrepreneurs.
However, it is noted that the Donor Advisory Committee (DAC) (now the Donors Partners Group) has occasionally established DAC sub-groups to focus on a particular sector or issue. A case in point is the Sub-group on Micro-finance. It is suggested that a similar approach be adopted by donor groups interested in addressing some of the serious challenges that are impeding the further growth and development of women’s enterprises in Tanzania, particularly capacity building of women-owned MSEs and improving access to financing, training, and business development services.
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