LIWAY: Livelihoods Improvement for Women and Youth

Project description / objective

To contribute to improving livelihoods in Addis Ababa through sustainable poverty reduction and social stability.

The programme specifically aims to increase the incomes of 257,000 poor people, including at least 128,500 women and 192,750 youth, through increased access to wage and self-employment opportunities.

Market system focus

Urban labour markets

Despite chronic unemployment overall, there are specific jobs for which the supply of labour in Addis Ababa is not effectively addressing demand. While this could equate to employment opportunities for poor women and youth, these groups face systemic disadvantages in accessing jobs.
LIWAY is targeting key constraints to provide women and youth with better access to employment opportunities.

Micro and small enterprise market

Micro and small enterprise (MSE) is highly complex and diverse. Despite government initiatives to support MSE start-up and growth, MSEs continue to be constrained by several factors, and the constraints are even greater for women and youth. LIWAY addresses cross-cutting constraints that prevent women and youth from starting or growing businesses.

Growth-oriented medium and large enterprises

Medium and large manufacturers, specifically those in low-tech, labour-intensive, light manufacturing, are key for Ethiopia’s industrialisation and continued growth. They hold promise for creating jobs. However, achieving growth in this sector is not without major challenges.
LIWAY is addressing these challenges to enable firms to grow and increase employment opportunities and income for women and youth. 

Skills development

Many firms in Addis Ababa with high growth potential are functioning with low productivity and below capacity due to the low skill level of workers. TVETs do not provide the training employers need and are constrained by outdated curricula and lack of required competencies.
LIWAY aims to improve skills delivery to increase incomes of poor women and youth through improved wage and self-employment opportunities.

Programme interventions

Urban labour markets

LIWAY is focused on the following intervention areas to address the key constraints to the supply and exchange of women and youth labour:

• Innovative solutions to improve access to job information for the target group (e.g. appropriately located digital job boards; mobile technology solutions; call centres).
• Development of physical and online platforms to improve job matching (e.g. job fairs for low- and semi-skilled workers; mobile job corners; gig work connection platform; digitisation of government job matching system).
• New models to reduce childcare costs and increase women’s participation in the workforce (e.g. use of surplus space at public institutions; public-private partnerships; franchise models).
• Policy and regulation reform to create an enabling environment for pro-poor childcare services (e.g. conducive registration and licensing requirements and taxation).
• Alternative ways to verify identity, skills, and trustworthiness for employment (e.g. know your customer; third-party provision of training, screening/assessment, certification, and verification services). 
• New insurance mechanisms to alleviate employer risk concerns (e.g. financial guarantor scheme). 

Micro and small enterprise market

LIWAY is focused on the following intervention areas to address the key constraints that prevent women and youth from starting and growing their own businesses.

• Availability of accessible and affordable physical and online spaces for production and trade (e.g. public-private partnership bazaars, digital marketing service for MSEs).
• New financial products and requirements suited to MSEs (e.g. non-collateralised and item-based loans).
• Availability and relevance of business-related information for MSEs (e.g. online business information portal and call centre). 
• Value chain partnerships to create new business opportunities (e.g. outsourced production and micro-franchise models).
• Policy and regulation reform to create an enabling environment for MSEs (e.g. simplification of the tax collection system). 

Growth-oriented medium and large enterprises

LIWAY is focused on the following intervention areas to address the key constraints that stop employers of women and youth from growing and creating more jobs:

• Strengthening domestic input supply and linkages between domestic input suppliers and manufacturers (e.g. wastepaper and waste plastic recycling collection and linkage improvements; online input supply information platform for the textile and garment sector).
• Development of internal and external production management capacities (e.g. first-level Kaizen; advanced Kaizen).
• Improvement of sales and marketing capabilities of manufacturing firms (e.g. e-commerce platform linkages). 
• Improvement of the HR function to increase employee performance and firm productivity (e.g. HR professional development; leadership forum).

Skills development

LIWAY is focused on the following intervention areas to address the key constraints that limit the ability of women and youth to develop the skills needed to unlock wage and self-employment opportunities:

• Quality improvement of trainers, curricula, and content within the skills system (e.g. curricula to address skills gaps such as soft skills and nanny training and certification; new trainer delivery models such as satellite training centres; trainer development).
• Marketing and improving perceptions toward TVET programming (e.g. marketing capacity and strategy development).
• Institutional strengthening of TVET colleges (e.g. national skills sector council to improve national directives, rules, and functions).
• Coordination and engagement of relevant stakeholders in the skills system (i.e. improved linkages and relationships between market actors across all interventions in the skills system).

Notable results (systemic change, poverty impact)

Urban labour markets

As of June 2022, 3,775 women (51%) and youth (91%) have increased incomes through employment as a result of various interventions, with a significant contributor being new online and offline labour exchange infrastructure such as a digital job matching platform and a job fair for low- and semi-skilled workers. 

Micro and small enterprise market

As of June 2022, 15,022 target group members have benefited from increased incomes through start-up and/or growth of MSEs.

Interventions such as Digital Marketing Service and Access to Information have matured and have shown tangible results in terms of creating additional wage employment opportunities resulting from improved business performance.

In addition, the PPP Bazaar intervention is being replicated by at least six non-partners. 

Growth-oriented medium and large enterprises

As of June 2022, 54 medium and large enterprises improved their business performance as a result of LIWAY’s interventions.

To date, 4,728 target group members have increased incomes through new wage employment (16%), new self-employment (32%), or higher wages in existing employment (42%).

Results are driven primarily by Kaizen, wastepaper recycling and HR skills development interventions. 

Skills development

As of June 2022, 19,917 target group members have increased incomes through wage (47%) or self-employment (53%) due to improvements in the skills delivery system.

Of the four strategic intervention areas for this system, the most progress has been achieved in the area of quality improvement of trainers, curricula, and content.

Most of the interventions have involved activities that focus on the design and delivery of outcome-oriented skills services products and services using updated market or demand-side information. These initiatives have been quickly taken up and replicated by employing firms and skills service providers.

Overall impact on poverty

As of June 2022, 43,442 target group members have increased incomes as a result of LIWAY’s interventions in the labour, MSE, MLE, and skills systems.

This includes 25,263 women (young & adult) and 32,782 youth (female & male).

To date, 33,195 new jobs have been created, 921 new MSEs have been established, and 8,521 enterprises have improved business models/service providers and users.

[uploaded: October 2022]