Afghanistan— “Addressing Root Causes Fund: A Brighter Future” funded by the Royal Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Client: Royal Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Prime: CORDAID / Afghanistan

Duration: 2017-2019

Region: Eastern Europe and Central Asia

Country: Afghanistan

 

Solutions: Economic Growth

This was a two (2) year program focusing on improving local economic prospects for urban youth in Kabul. The program has 5 main components:

  1. Enable young urban Afghans in Kabul to set up and grow a business
  2. Link skilled young Afghans to employers
  3. Scale up Afghan small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) by providing Business Development Support services
  4. Improve the business enabling environment
  5. Address key issues hampering the ease of doing business and gainful employment.

During the inception phase a number of activities needed to be conducted, amongst these the implementation of a baseline study. The baseline study, should allow the project to orient monitoring activities, establish targets and orient project activities and strategies to successfully achieve these project targets.

 

Sample Activities

  • Prepared, conducted and followed-up on a business matchmaking conference held between participating Afghan businesses and both Afghan and international firms interested in working with these mentored firms.
  • Completed an inventory of SME development / Business Support Development projects;
  • Developed a semi-structured interview outline;
  • Designed the scoring questions to be included in the interviews;
  • Conducted a stakeholder analysis, using the framework provided by the project; and,
  • Identified, trained, and mentored 29 firms (including ten women-owned businesses) for intensive business management capacity-building.

 

Select Results

  • The OXUS team has completed the Baseline Survey and is currently implementing the Business Acceleration phase of the program. Specific achievements include:
  • Designed and constructed four separate survey questionnaires using Survey Monkey;
  • Conducted twelve (12) focus group discussions with 94 Afghan youth (male and female) who are either employed or seeking employment in the private sector;
  • Conducted a Market Scan of 6 similar international donor projects
  • Conducted 12 semi-structured interviews with SME owners (both male and female);
  • Conducted a Benchmarking survey of 5 international donor or Afghan government officials;
  • Completed a second cohort of interviews with 29 SMEs out of which 20 firms (including 8 women-owned firms) were trained and mentored to grow their business sales and networks; and,
  • Planned, organized, and held a business networking event with potential foreign investment partners for all mentored Afghan firms.