12–13 Jun 2025
Goethe University Frankfurt
Europe/Zurich timezone

More loans, better skills, safer spaces: Evidence from clustering savings groups in Afghanistan

12 Jun 2025, 16:45
30m
HoF Deutsche Bank (E.01)

HoF Deutsche Bank (E.01)

Parallel Session Financial Inclusion and Microfinance Parallel Session 1

Speaker

Juliane Zenker (Universität Göttingen)

Description

The Strengthening Women's Economic Empowerment Project (SWEEP) in Afghanistan was a US$2.74 million community-level intervention implemented by the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) in cooperation with the World Bank in pilot areas of Afghanistan. SWEEP formed clusters of existing savings groups and provided capital to fund additional loans among cluster members. It further distributed business services, like business and soft skills training, mentoring, and access to markets and business networks. The project sought to increase and enhance the participation of women in income-generation and business activities, thereby fostering an improvement in overall well-being. SWEEP tackled various impediments hindering women in economic pursuits, such as restricted access to capital, skill training, and business networks. The project strategically build on AKF-established female-only Community Based Savings Groups (CBSGs) as its delivery platform. By strengthening female-only networks and deploying intervention components through these safe environments, the project addressed a spectrum of social and cultural barriers that had previously impeded the success of economic interventions targeting female employment and empowerment in societies characterized by extreme gender inequality, as exemplified by Afghanistan. This report presents the outcomes of the impact evaluation of SWEEP, employing a two-arm Cluster- Randomized Control Trial (C-RCT) design encompassing 2,164 individuals from 556 savings groups. To gauge the gender-specific efficacy of the project, the intervention was also implemented within male savings groups, encompassing approximately 20 percent of the studied savings groups and individuals.

Keyword Financial Inclusion and Microfinance

Authors

Juliane Zenker (Universität Göttingen) Mathew Morton (University of Chicago) Sarah Hadddock (World Bank) Shubha Chakravarty (World Bank)

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