Promoting Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) in Rwanda

Access to Finance for Women-owned MSMEs in Rwanda

In Rwanda, the ability of women entrepreneurs to sustain and to grow their businesses is limited due to a number of factors, e.g. the lack of access to formal financial services and inability to meet the financial institutions’ collateral requirements. Furthermore, due to gender and social norms in the Rwandan society and the perception that women are not able to take financial decisions, women often do not get the opportunity to learn and apply financial skills.

The project aims to enhance the economic participation of women, to improve women’s working conditions and improved performance of women-led businesses.

The WEE project is part of the Special Initiative “Decent Work for a Just Transition” of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). The WEE project was launched in January 2024 and will end in June 2026. The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH is implementing this project in collaboration with the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MINICOM) in Rwanda.

The project has two outputs:

1. The working conditions for female employees in selected companies have improved
2. The positioning of women-led businesses in the economic and social environment has improved

German Sparkassenstiftung Eastern Africa (DSIK) was assigned for the second output in March 2025 and is tasked with achieving the following indicators:

• 2 formal financing products, either newly developed or adapted to meet the needs of women-owned businesses (1 targeting microenterprises and 1 targeting small- and medium-sized companies), have been piloted and launched by up to 2 partner financial service providers.
• Out of the 50 targeted women entrepreneurs, 25 have applied for the newly developed or adapted financial products.