Empowering Women Entrepreneurs Living with Disabilities in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)

Inclusive economic development is only possible when dignified opportunities are available to all members of society, particularly to those who tend to be marginalized and overlooked. The $300 million Empowering Women Entrepreneurs and Upgrading MSMEs for Economic Transformation and Jobs in Democratic Republic of Congo Project, also known as the TRANSFORME Project, is aiming to catalyze such inclusive economic development by supporting the economic inclusion of all women, including women living with disabilities. It builds on and is scaling up the effective holistic approach of the DRC-SME Development and Growth (PADMPME) Project which closed in 2024, having helped establish thousands of new firms and create thousands of jobs.

TRANSFORME recently completed training sessions for female micro-entrepreneurs, training 23,531 women in five cities to strengthen their personal initiative and entrepreneurship skills to develop businesses. The project took measures to ensure that entrepreneurs with reduced mobility could participate in the training sessions.  Community organizations, such as local churches, approached the project to also include women who live with hearing disabilities, but who were eligible and highly motivated in joining the training program. The project promptly took action to ensure that these motivated women could also be included. Given their specific needs, sign-language translators had to be trained first to facilitate the training session together with the project’s coaches.

The training sessions were a strong success through motivated participation alongside a supportive learning environment. A total of 75 women with hearing disabilities completed their training sessions in two provinces. The sessions were recently visited by Albert Zeufack, the World Bank’s Division Director for Angola, Burundi, DRC and Sao Tome and Principe. Albert highlighted the need to focus on women with disabilities in all provinces involved in the project and to make sure that they are represented in greater numbers.

The support for these inspiring women will continue. The next step for these up-and-coming women micro-entrepreneurs will be to receive grants to support them in launching or strengthening entrepreneurial activities, which will allow them to hire and give economic opportunities to other members of society.

“The World Bank through the TRANSFORME Project has given us the opportunity to participate at this training, and I ask you to continue to consider this type of project so that more people can benefit. Many women with hearing loss were unable to participate in this training, but they would like to take part in the future,” said a woman with hearing impairments who benefited from the training, speaking in sign language.

Holistic Strategy

The TRANSFORME Project provides holistic support to entrepreneurs and enterprises across multiple target cities in the DRC through training sessions and economic grants to women micro-entrepreneurs, new enterprises, and established SMEs, with the aim of supporting these private businesses to increase their revenues, strengthen their climate resilience, and create decent jobs for others. It is also working for these groups to have improved access to finance by facilitating credit and by launching new financial services, while also strengthening the overall business ecosystem through innovative SME Hubs, structural reforms, and overall capacity building. The overall objective is to support individual entrepreneurs and enterprises, while also creating an enabling business environment that will support them and others to continue growing sustainably over the long term.

The TRANSFORME Project is based on the previous successful iteration of the PADMPME Project, closed in June 2024, which proved that this holistic approach works in the DRC. PADMPME assisted thousands of entrepreneurs and enterprises and the business ecosystem across four cities, establishing 6,012 new firms and creating 14,926 new full-time jobs, significantly higher than its targets. TRANSFORME is scaling up this effective approach and implementing the lessons learned from the previous project, including a stronger focus on access to finance and climate risks.

By Zouhour Karray, Senior Private Sector Specialist, World Bank and Jan Van Zoelen Cortes, Consultant, World Bank.