Evaluation of e-commerce project for Rwandan MSEs

E-commerce has become a key tool for businesses due to its role in ensuring safety and convenience, business continuity, expanding market reach, driving digital transformation, providing customer insights, and contributing to job creation and economic growth. Businesses that embrace e-commerce are better positioned to navigate uncertainties, meet changing consumer demands, and thrive in a rapidly evolving business landscape.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Rwanda imposed a lockdown that led to the disruption of many businesses and jobs. Large businesses were able to mitigate the closing down of physical shops using e-commerce, but many small businesses did not have the capacity to do so.

In response, Access to Finance Rwanda (AFR) launched a project called Accelerating growth of Micro and Small Enterprises (MSEs) through expanding the e-commerce sector in Rwanda (or iHuzo). Funded by the Mastercard Foundation (MCF), the iHuzo project forms part of the MCF’s Covid-19 Recovery and Resilience Programme.

The project aimed to enable MSEs to recover from the impact of the pandemic and build resilience against future shocks by linking them to e-commerce platforms and capacitating them to conduct their businesses through e-commerce. The project also hoped to use e-commerce to address the issue of unemployment in Rwanda by creating more work opportunities, especially for the youth.

Genesis was engaged by the AFR to undertake the end-of-pilot evaluation of the iHuzo project. The evaluation involved the review of project documents, a survey and focus groups with MSEs and e-freelancers in urban and rural settings.

Based on this research, Genesis produced an evaluation report providing the project partners with a clear view of and recommendations on the pilot’s performance, relevance, sustainability, successes and limitations. We also drew up a learning brief that will be used to disseminate the findings. The findings will inform the design of the second phase of the project.