The Livelihoods Improvement for Women and Youth (LIWAY) is a nine-year programme (July 2017 to June 2026) funded by Sweden and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The programme is implemented by a consortium of partners comprised of SNV Netherlands Development Organisation, Mercy Corps, Technoserve, and Save the Children International.   LIWAY aims to contribute to sustainable poverty reduction and social stability in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia by increasing incomes through improved wage and self-employment opportunities, primarily for poor women and youth. The objective is to increase incomes of 257,000 poor people in Addis Ababa, of which at least 128,500 (50%) are women (young and adult) and 192,750 (75%) are youth (female and male). The programme works in four interrelated market systems (Labour, MSE, MLE and Skills), and together they contribute to structural transformation. Each system is led by a consortium partner that works with public and private market actors to make the system work better for the target groups. LIWAY applies a market system development (MSD) approach that involves identifying the root causes of market failure that disadvantage or exclude poor women and youth from wage and self-employment opportunities and identifying private companies and public institutions with the incentive and ability to deliver change. The aim is to make market systems work better for the target groups, while demonstrating benefit to public and private actors that play a role in the systems to ensure local ownership and sustainability and continued improvement beyond the programme period. The approach involves experimentation and learning rapidly from failures and amplifying successes. LIWAY shares lessons learned and best practices to encourage involvement of other market actors to scale solutions and develop new innovations to maximise impact for the target groups (women and youth).   Progress Towards Systemic Change To date, LIWAY has achieved enormous systemic impacts. These include indications of different market actors changing behaviours that lead to impact with LIWAY support (adopt), which is the case with most of LIWAY’s interventions. This includes market actors piloting and adapting new business models with LIWAY’s support and committing resources to do so.     There are also several examples of market actors continuing and adapting the new behaviours without LIWAY’s support (Adapt). This includes, for example, platform adaptations and upgrades, technology and service advancements, marketing and product diversification, and adaptations to business models for different targets. LIWAY has also seen instances of expansion and replication of interventions to benefit more people (Expand). Examples include expansion to additional regions, new partnerships, and additional service providers. It also includes replication by other market actors, such as in the case of the Digital Marketing Service and Public-Private Partnership Bazaar, as well as colleges copying the nanny training delivery model. There are also indications of other market actors changing their behaviours in response to the market changes (respond), which includes new proclamations, policies, directives, guidelines, and manuals, as well as new initiatives (e.g., the government’s digital overseas employment initiative) and the involvement and behaviour change of other actors (e.g., logistic providers in the case of waste recycling).     LIWAY has also seen that its interventions have begun to attract the attention of development institutions, as well as national and international private actors working in similar spaces. There has also been progress with respect to system thinking for effective GESI integration and evidence-based advocacy initiatives for sustainable impact.  There are also signs of higher-order impacts across the systems, which include increased diversity and inclusivity, improved gender dynamics and economic empowerment, enhanced job quality, poverty reduction, and increased economic contribution.  

Ethiopian digital start-up enterprises are emerging despite the several challenges they face, such as lack of access to finance, infrastructure, trade licenses, limited entrepreneurship, and digital literacy. To address such constraints, LIWAY’s Micro and Small Enterprises (MSE) system is implementing an intervention named Realising Aspiration of Digital Enterprise Transformation (RADET) in collaboration with the Ministry of Labour and Skills (MoLS). One of RADET’s strategic activities is fostering the enabling environment for digital entrepreneurs (DEs) to start and grow/expand their businesses. LIWAY and MoLS are working in close collaboration with the Ministry of Trade and Regional Integration (MoTRI), the Ministry of Innovation and Technology (MINT), and other relevant industry actors, such as the Digital Society Associations, to unlock the enabling environment. Trade licensing and building the competencies of start-up DEs are among the key enabling environment priorities. Accordingly, representatives from LIWAY, MoLS, MoTRI, business associations, and selected private companies convened on June 14 at the Getfam Hotel to validate the developed trade license categories and areas of competencies needed for digital literacy and related employability skills for digital businesses. A team of 25 experts from the digital industry and the relevant ministries formed a taskforce to conduct situation assessments and develop initial contents that were presented in the validation workshop. The validation workshop entertained 40 representatives from the digital industry and experts from relevant ministries. The task force from the digital industry and ministers have presented the eight (8) trade license categories and 38 sub-categories. Participants discussed, validated, and provided their input on the licensing areas and their competencies. The major trade-license categories include Business Process Outsourcing Services, Cloud Computing Services, Ecommerce Services, Fintech Services, GIG Services, Internet Security Services, Virtual Reality and Game Development Services, and Digital Equipment Maintenance and Repair Services. Key skill sets for those categories and subcategories were identified and defined. Units of competency were prepared for the above digital business categories and subcategories, with detailed descriptions for each of the skill sets. It is expected that the improvement in trade licensing and the developed competency areas will be endorsed by MoTRI before the end of the current year.