Browsing by Author "Sospeter, Nyamagere"

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    The impact of business development services in promotion of women entrepreneurship in Tanzania: the case of Mwanza region
    (University of Dar es Salaam, 2007) Sospeter, Nyamagere
    This study assesses the impact of business development services (BDS) in the promotion of women entrepreneurship in Tanzania, taking Mwanza region as a case study. It specifically looks at the roles of BDS in the development of women MSEs, the awareness of business benefits for women arising from BDS, the extent to which BDS assist women MSEs to formalize their businesses and examines the growth levels for women MSEs after receiving BDS. Interviews were used as data collection method for obtaining the targeted information from both 5 BDS providers and women MSEs. Of the 8 women MSEs, 3 are from food processing, 3 are from tailoring and 2 are from the beauty care sector. The roles of the BDS are to support business growth by providing demand driven services in order to improve the quality, sustainability and development of the women MSEs.The women MSEs who use BDS are aware of their benefits to their businesses and plan to continue receiving BDS. The findings also show that BDS assist MSEs in formalizing their businesses and also contribute to levels of growth such as value of assets, level of sales, number of employees, market coverage have increased. There is a positive impact of BDS on the growth of women MSEs, although most of women MSEs are not aware of the existence of BDS and its benefits to their businesses. There is a need for capacity building of BDS providers through support from the government, donor community and other stakeholders. Also there is a need for BDS providers to form an association so that they can start a business of producing packaging materials that will address the problem of packaging materials by making them available to MSEs in the region