Somaliland Business Fund – Impact Evaluation (2016)

It was managed by the World Bank and designed to provide direct support to the private sector to promote enterprise start-up and growth to create sustainable employment and income opportunities. The Fund comprised an open, competitive scheme that co-financed business development services and physical and capital assets on a matching basis. In total 174 grants were awarded and US$9.2 million disbursed during 2013-14. 

The evaluation focused on the following questions: To what extent did the SBF contribute to building stronger, more sustainable markets? To what extent did the SBF achieve an equitable distribution of benefits? How robust were FMU marketing and application processes and which aspects could have been improved and how? How robust were FMU monitoring, disbursement and evaluation processes? What was the contribution of the governance arrangements (Project Steering Committee, Grants Advisory Panel, development partners) and how could this have been strengthened further?

Activities included overall responsibility for the delivery of the project; interface with DANIDA (particularly Mr Michael Thyge Poulsen); design and implementation of the project; drafting the final report. Data were collected in four main ways: 1) one-to-one interviews with key stakeholders; 2) a phone survey of 266 businesses; three focus groups in Hargeisa (primarily manufacturers); Gebilay (primarily agriculturalists); and Burao (mixed agriculturalists, gums and resins and services); interviews with Government officials, development partners, SBF staff, academics and examination of documents. The Report drew conclusions with respect to the evaluation questions and 19 recommendations.