Enabling entrepreneurs: An impact evaluation of a training and mentoring programme in Uganda
In the post-COVID-19 landscape, Uganda's economic growth hinges on the success of small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs). Supporting SMEs to grown and gain scale is therefore central to both government and the private sector. However, SMEs face to main types of bottlenecks: strategy bottlenecks – i.e. the soft skills associated with business management, decision making and leadership- as well as operational bottlenecks – i.e. the execution of better business processes and practices that enable growth. Interventions aiming at supporting SMEs often provide some kind of business training or generic mentoring with limited regard to the types of skills entrepreneurs lack. This study intends to randomise firms into a standard training, a standard training coupled with targeted strategy mentoring or operations mentoring for highly skilled and growth-oriented entrepreneurs in Uganda, thereby contributing to emerging evidence in improving SME growth, productivity and profitability.