Sitra Abubaker, Founder, Social.ly and Programme Participant, Social Entrepreneurship Training for Women in the Horn of Africa programme, 2020-2021

Two years ago when Sitra Abubaker founded her digital marketing start-up Social.ly in Ethiopia, she admits she had no educational background and no professional experience to run a business. So when a friend told her about UNITAR Division for Prosperity’s online course empowering women as entrepreneurs, she leaped at the chance.

“If I had to pick one thing … it’s understanding customers … developing a value proposition that is meaningful and relevant,” she says. “Everything I learned from this course has been helpful to my start-up.”

With Social.ly, Sitra wants to bridge the gap in digital marketing between the youth and market audiences. “This course taught me how to develop a business plan and devise a pitch deck,” she says.

“As a young woman in East Africa, the biggest challenge I faced in the last two years since I started is dealing with a [sexist] environment. This programme taught me I just have to keep defying the social expectations to become successful,” she adds.

In addition to strengthening her determination to defy traditional gender norms, Sitra also realized her original business model hindered its scalability, which spurred her to restructure the company. Since then, she has added 18 new clients, bringing the total number to 60.

The training programme Sitra attended, the UNITAR Social Entrepreneurship Training for Women in Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Sudan (the Horn of Africa programme), 2020-2021 Cycle, is one of UNITAR Prosperity offerings designed to help budding entrepreneurs on a range of subjects that further the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) laid out in the global development agenda. While UNITAR promotes all SDGs, UNITAR Prosperity leverages its strengths in SDG4 (Quality Education) to help deliver on its commitments to SDG5 (Gender Equality) and SDG8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth). All of these directly contribute to SDG1, eradicating poverty by 2030.

Entrepreneurs – women, men and youth alike – are vital to the global economy; they drive innovation and product development, improve living standards and create wealth. According to a 2019 report from the World Trade Organization, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) represent over 90 per cent of the business population, 60–70 per cent of employment and 55 per cent of GDP in developed economies. Their contribution to the global economy is enormous.

“Since adopting the SDGs, the global community has recognized their centrality as a road map to a more equitable and sustainable world. The COVID-19 pandemic brought that reality into sharp focus, showing our world’s pre-existing fragility,” says Mihoko Kumamoto, Director of UNITAR Division for Prosperity.

“It is, therefore, essential that we shape our post-COVID-19 world around building resilience and invest in ensuring that humankind and the planet can coexist. Entrepreneurship, especially social entrepreneurship with its focus on sustainable, socially-conscious business models, will be an essential investment in driving the overall SDG agenda and the targets of SDGs 1, 5 and 8 in particular.”

The Horn of Africa programme is designed to provide participants with the hard and soft skills they need to develop business ideas that spark their passion while tackling challenges specific to their communities and regions.

SDG5 has always been a key focus of UNITAR Prosperity. While the pandemic continues to wreak severe damage on both men and women across the globe, a pandemic, like any other seismic upheaval, is never neutral, and women are generally among the first to feel the impact. The pandemic’s economic disruptions have directly impacted women’s small and medium businesses, where they are more likely to be employed, as well as the informal economy, where they make up a disproportionate percentage of workers.

And while the pandemic will eventually be brought under control, the devastating impact on women’s livelihoods are projected to persist for years to come. According to a recent UN Women report, of the 96 million people projected to be pushed into extreme poverty by the close of 2021, an estimated 47 million will be women and girls. This will bring the total number of women and girls living on less than USD1.90 a day to 435 million.

So as important as SDG5 was before the arrival of the pandemic, advancing its targets is now critical not only for women but for the global economy as a whole.

To this end, the Horn of Africa programme, in which Sitra participated, consists of two phases covering the concepts and skills needed over the full entrepreneurship cycle, from idea to market, so participants can conceptualize and build their own businesses and solutions.

The first phase covered the fundamentals of entrepreneurship and innovation. The 182 participants who completed the course learned the process of identifying opportunities and mobilizing resources to bring a new enterprise to life – by using design thinking and lean start-up techniques – to create desirable, feasible, viable and sustainable solutions that solve customer needs and problems. The programme’s expert team of 31 local and regional coaches provided mentoring support to help the participants further develop and refine their business initiatives and models. By the end of the programme, each learner produced a peer-reviewed business model addressing a specific development challenge in their region.

“The goal of the programme is to empower women and girls with the knowledge and skills they need to go out and do things for themselves,” says UNITAR Prosperity Programme Manager Shamsul Hadi Shams. “We know about the challenges women face. They have dreams and the passion to turn those dreams into reality. Our goal is to give them the knowledge and tools they need to achieve these dreams. This is why we do what we do.”

The business ideas of the participants range from environmental solutions to tackling infant mortality and women’s health; from product marketing to youth-focused information and communications technology skills. Phase 2 of the programme is currently in progress, with 65 of the first phase’s strongest learners participating. It will conclude in March 2021.

The Horn of Africa programme is modelled on a gender-balanced programme in Iraq focusing on the country’s youth. Originally launched in 2016, the Iraq programme, Transforming the Future: Empowering Social Entrepreneurs and Youth Leaders in Iraq,[1] targets junior and mid-career professionals eager to gain entrepreneurial skills and knowledge to develop businesses and solutions that can contribute to economic productivity and create jobs.

Each year from 2016 and 2019, roughly 20-25 participants undergo a six-month skills-based training with peer learning and knowledge-sharing. They form a network of practitioners and are supported by experts from the public and private sectors, academic institutions and civil society. Prior to COVID-19, participants met face-to-face for three workshops, one each in Baghdad, Istanbul and Hiroshima, as well as one webinar. When the Iraq programme moved online due to the pandemic, demand increased exponentially; 120 participants are in the current programme, which will conclude in March 2021. The Iraq programme has over 100 alumni.

Importantly, those that participate often stay connected and “pay it forward” following its completion.

“We have a really interactive course and invite alumni to engage as part of the UNITAR local and regional team to give the participants a local context, and support them on regular basis. The key is collaboration,” says Ali Ihsan Sidki, the local coordinator for the programme. “The alumni participation is all volunteer. These entrepreneurs want to give back to the community.”

Partnerships with leading academic, public and private sector organizations are essential to ensuring UNITAR provides participants with cutting-edge training. And to keep fuelling the entrepreneurship pipeline, UNITAR seeks to expand both the content and the participant base to further reach and support underserved communities.

In January 2020, UNITAR Prosperity launched Frontier Technologies for Sustainable Development: Unlocking Women’s Entrepreneurship through Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Afghanistan and Iraq, an innovative training programme targeting women of the two post-conflict countries.

The innovative three-month training programme links several key learning modalities. Content provided by world-class organizations is contextualized to the countries’ unique national and regional conditions by local experts and practitioners, each participant is supported by a local coach, and peer-reviews are used to facilitate learning.

Programme partners include Stanford University’s Center for Professional Development and artificial Intelligence (AI) experts from the private sector including Fuji Xerox of Japan and Amada AI Innovation Laboratory, Inc.

When the course finished, 35 participants, nominated by local organizations and associations, were given the opportunity to interact with other women entrepreneurs in different sectors from Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as with experts, coaches and the UNITAR programme support team.

“The programme and the Stanford courses are a life changing point for me. Everyone should have this chance and benefit from it. The topics, the way they are presented, the exercises, and how it helped me to learn more is one of the best learning experiences I have,” said Asan Muthana Atallah, a participant from Baghdad, Iraq.

“[UNITAR Prosperity] has been working in Afghanistan a long time. We have been there to help. So we asked them, ‘What can we do? What do you need?’ And the answer was, ‘We need to understand innovation’,” says Michael Adalla, Specialist, Public Finance and Trade Programme at UNITAR.

“This course took place at such a challenging time and these women could have dropped out, but they didn’t. They showed a great level of commitment. We talked to them every day and formed a real bond. There was real engagement because of the chaos. We still speak to them,” adds Mr Adalla.

The breadth and wealth of business models presented and peer-reviewed in the programme was truly inspiring. They include solutions to challenges related to environment (waste recycling platform/app); health and well-being (mental health support app, beauty salon app, home fitness app, and online yoga); employment (platform for job seekers and employers); information and communication (knowledge-sharing platform, women's printing services, office space rental location app); eCommerce/eServices (online supermarket platform/delivery app, online service platform for female medical students, online platform/booking for event halls, online platform and tracker for government transactions); education (on-demand Arabic training material development, eLearning app, training platform); handicraft and fashion (online marketing tools for handicrafts and fashion accessories); and social entrepreneurship (online services for minorities and marginalized communities).

“We must not go back to our pre-COVID-19 lives. Instead, we must grab this opportunity and transition to a more sustainable way of life,” Ms Kumamoto says. “By providing the world’s entrepreneurs with the key skills and savvy they need to realize their dreams, we will be able to move to a ‘new normal’, one that thinks holistically and always with the future in mind. The change needs to start with every one of us. Entrepreneurs can help lead the way.”

UNITAR Division for Prosperity wishes to thank our donors, without whom our work would not be possible. Social Entrepreneurship Training for Women in Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Sudan is made possible by the Government and the People of Japan.

Frontier Technologies for Sustainable Development: Unlocking Women’s Entrepreneurship through Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Afghanistan and Iraq is made possible by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency.

[1] The programme’s name has changed over the years to reflect changes in focus and curriculum. It is currently called Innovation for Growth – Inspiring Youth Entrepreneurs and Leaders in Iraq and will conclude this year.

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