Inclusive international trade: Assisting female-led firms

While many lower- and middle-income countries aim to grow and diversify their exports, enabling small and medium sized firms to export and enter global value chains remains a key challenge. This is particularly true for female-led firms, which only compose 5-10% of all firms in the MENA region and overall less than 20% in other parts of the Global South. So far, there is little evidence what measures can improve the integration of female-led firms into global value chains. This project aims to fill this evidence gap by rigorously assessing the impact of export consortia on the export performance of female-led SMEs in Tunisia through a randomized controlled trial. This experiment is part of the second phase of the German Development Cooperation project “Export Promotion to new, Sub-Saharan Markets (PEMA II)”, which is implemented by the German Development Agency GIZ together with the Tunisian export promotion agency CEPEX. The idea is that forming consortia is another way of reducing the fixed cost of exporting by pooling resources, sharing risk and potentially even selling products together under the same brand. Furthermore, closely collaborating with other firms broadens your business network, which is considered a key success factor in the trade literature.