The Road to the SDGs

X The BRAVE Women Programme was established in 2018 and formally launched in February 2019 in Yemen with plans to extend to Nigeria and Burkina Faso. Comprising a five-year grant awarded under the Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi), it focuses on addressing barriers to women entrepreneurship in selected value chains in Yemen, Nigeria, and Burkina Faso. X The funding provided for the BRAVE Women Programme is from external grant resources aimed at unlocking the entrepreneurship potential of women. The Women and Youth Empowerment Unit is leading IsDB’s engagement in We-Fi. The programme is managed by ICD Industry and Business Environment Support team. X The BRAVE Women Programme aims to reach around 1,500 women-owned and -led SMEs with specialised business training and to help 1,200 to qualify for combined grant matching support and technical assistance. ACHIEVEMENTS X The BRAVE Programme has so far achieved the following outcomes: – 620 firms have been provided with business continuity training – 348 firms have benefited from a matching-grant scheme – 15,000 jobs have been sustained, with 1,541 new jobs created. X The BRAVE Women Programme’s Yemen project started in February 2019 and made progress in improving capacity development in the Sanaa, Aden, Ibb, Hadramout and Taiz provinces of Yemen. In April 2020, the Nigeria project got underway with plans to provide employment to 1,000 women and skills development to 600 women, with the Nigerian Bank of Industry Ltd taking on the role of local implementing agency. INVESTMENT X A total of US$ 6.0 million was raised for the BRAVE Programme from the MENA Transition Fund, which was established in 2012 at the request of the Deauville Partnership with Arab Countries in Transition. The second phase of the BRAVE Programme started in 2019 with additional US$ 3.0 million in funding from the MENA Transition Fund. X The BRAVE Women Programme is fully funded by We-Fi, with a US$ 32.2 million multi-country allocation under the first round of applications for projects in Yemen, Nigeria and Burkina Faso. We-Fi partners include 14 donor governments, six MDBs as implementing partners, and numerous other stakeholders in the public and private sector around the world. X IsDB Group is one of the designated implementing partners of the We-Fi fund, while ICD provides technical support for the implementation of the BRAVE Programme, in close collaboration with SMEPS as the executing agency in Yemen, which is the pilot country for the programme. Yemen was awarded US$ 8.8 million of the total grant. T H E B R A V E P R O G R A M M E 620 firms provided with business continuity training, 348 firms benefited from a matching-grant scheme, 15,000 jobs sustained, and 1,541 new jobs created [ 101 ] T H E R O A D T O T H E S D G s | P R O G R E S S A N D A C H I E V E M E N T S