Soft Skills, Big Impact: Transforming Women-led Businesses in Nigeria's Informal Sector

Women entrepreneurs in Nigeria’s informal sector face numerous barriers to business success, including limited access to formal training, financial constraints, and market instability. While technical skills are often emphasized in entrepreneurship programs, the role of soft skills such as leadership, financial literacy, and business management remains unexplored. This project aims to conduct an exploratory study on Soft Skills Training Program for Women Entrepreneurs, an intervention by the partner organization, ARMTI. The program is an initiative that combines soft skills training, mentorship, and hands-on business development workshops. This is designed to equip women in Nigeria’s informal labour sector with the tools and skills necessary to enhance their entrepreneurial abilities. 

The project will investigate the program implementation, also leverage on our partnership to access the program data and conduct structured interviews with participating women entrepreneurs in the initiative. The research questions to be considered include: how accessible are soft skills training programs? What factors affect the uptake? What barriers hinder uptake and participation? What are the preliminary impacts on business performance and economic empowerment?

The project’s practical value lies in generating insights that can inform future design of a full-scale RCT, aimed at improving women’s business resilience. Conceptually, it will add to evidence on informal sector entrepreneurship by bridging the gap between soft skills development and economic empowerment. From distributional point of view, understanding how different groups of women including those in different sectors or income levels, navigate these challenges will be important in designing inclusive and scalable programs.