| dc.description.abstract | The Government of Kenya has since the 1980s established several devolved Funds to
enhance citizen's participation in governance and accelerate national development. The
women enterprise fund was conceived to ameliorate the disadvantaged positions women
hold in the society, empower them in asset accumulation and development, income and
status enhancement and freedom. The fund is open to all women either as a group,
company or as individuals. The forms are usually provided by the District Gender
Social Development Officers, while company or individual applicants apply directly to
the participating Micro Finance Institutions(MFI,s) who issue their own regulations.
The main objective of this study is to explore the challenges facing the implementation
of the Women Enterprise Fund in Kenya, whereas the specific objectives is to identify
the challenges faced in the disbursement of the Women Enterprise Fund and also to
examine the extent to which the challenges affect the implementation of the Fund. The
study sites were three main constituencies within Nairobi being; Langatta Westlands,
and Makadara constituencies. Primary and Secondary data were the main source of
information. The sample size was made up of sixty (60) respondents and the researcher
picked twenty (20) respondents from each of the three constituencies. Three (3) key
informants were picked from each of the constituencies and interviewed in order to
establish the different difficulties that they experienced while trying to access the
women enterprise Fund. ..,
-. The women interviewed were within the age bracket ranging from 20-60. Out of this,
(63.3%) were married and 66.7 % had Secondary School Education. A majority of
women interviewed about the source of information on the women enterprise fund stated
that they heard about it from the women groups (73%). Asked if accessing the women
enterprise fund was easy or difficult, a majority (53.4%) stated that it was easy to access
the fund and some of the reasons given were reasons such as having an active senior
district Officer and having a group that has been registered in place. Other respondents
though thought that there is a lot of time taken to process the documents and so this
makes accessing the women enterprise fund difficult. Other factors that the respondents
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thought that make the process difficult are factors such as corrupt officials and difficulties
in accessing the application forms.
A majority of the women interviewed said that they got their money through the Bank
(89.8%) whereas (10%) said they got the funds from the MFIs.The total amount received
by the applicants ranged from 31,000-50,000 Ksh. indicated by the majority of the
respondents (70 %) and the time taken from the time of application to the time of
disbursement has indicated by (36%) of the respondents is one month. The security
required against the loan was given as Business and Financial Asset as indicated by
(40%) of the respondents whereas the mode of disbursement of the funds was stated as
cheque which had (58.6%) of the respondents. A majority of the respondents (88.4) were
aware of the grace period and repayment period. The respondents who were not
comfortable with the repayment structure were (31.7%) as compared to (63%) who were
comfortable.
The study recommends that the funds allocated to the women enterprise fund should be
increased from Ksh. 50,000 to Ksh. 150,000 to help the women carryout a meaningful
and successful businesses. In addition, the Government should focus on supporting
women in order to explore market opportunities outside the constituencies, Organize peer
review forums to enable women groups to share their experience and also to increase the
number of girl child enrolment in schools. | en |
