MICROCAPITAL BRIEF: EU Funding Expansion of EBRD Women in Business Programme to Morocco

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), a UK-based multilateral institution, is expanding its Women in Business Programme to Morocco, where it will offer training sessions, networking opportunities and internet-based mentoring for women entrepreneurs in the country. The training will cover financial literacy, marketing, leadership skills and e-commerce. In addition, EBRD will extend credit lines to Moroccan financial institutions for on-lending to women-led small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The program, which is funded by the EU Initiative for Financial Inclusion, will launch in the city of Casablanca on September 18.

EBRD’s Women in Business Programme, which is active in 19 countries, has received approximately EUR 70 million (USD 82 million) in funding from the EU and the governments of Italy, Kazakhstan, Luxembourg, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey as well as several EBRD accounts, including the Taiwan Business-EBRD Technical Cooperation Fund.

The EU Initiative for Financial Inclusion began operations in the Southern Mediterranean in 2016. Its goal in that regions is to provide access to finance for 200,000 youth and women-led startups and SMEs operating in Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Tunisia and Yemen. The Southern Mediterranean initiative was launched with a budget of EUR 1.6 billion (USD 1.7 billion), including EUR 660 million (USD 769 million) from EBRD, the EU’s European Investment Bank (EIB) and the German development bank Kreditanstalt fur Wiederaufbau (KfW).

EBRD was founded in 1991 and has 66 shareholding countries – plus the EU and the European Investment Bank – as of 2018. With a focus on “the promotion of private and entrepreneurial initiative,” it invested EUR 9.7 billion (USD 11.2 billion) during 2017 in companies in 36 countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, North Africa and the Middle East. As of May 2018, EBRD has 34 active projects in Morocco and a project portfolio of EUR 889 million (USD 1 billion), including both disbursed and undisbursed commitments.

By Nicholas Galimberti, Research Associate

Sources and Additional Resources

EBRD press release
https://www.ebrd.com/news/events/launch-of-the-morocco-women-in-business-programme.html

Women in Business Program background
http://www.ebrdwomeninbusiness.com/?s=about

EU Initiative for Financial Inclusion background
https://ec.europa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/sites/near/files/neighbourhood/pdf/key-documents/nif/20160601-eu-initiative-for-financial-inclusion.pdf

EBRD Morocco-based activities
https://www.ebrd.com/where-we-are/morocco/data.html

MicroCapital Brief; July 18, 2018; Government of Sweden Gives $3m for EBRD’s Women in Business Programme for SMEs in Moldova
https://www.microcapital.org/microcapital-brief-government-of-sweden-gives-3m-for-ebrds-women-in-business-programme-for-smes-in-moldova/

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