MENA-OECD Women’s Economic Empowerment Forum

This high-level Leadership Dialogue brought together decision-makers and international partners to discuss strategic efforts to advance women’s economic empowerment across the Middle East and North Africa. The session explored how government leadership in Egypt and France (as co-Chairs of the WEEF), international cooperation, and innovative financing strategies can accelerate progress on gender equality and regional competitiveness.

Achieving women’s economic empowerment is not only a matter of equity—it is a cornerstone of sustainable development and a key driver for delivering on the 2030 Agenda. This session brought together policymakers, development practitioners, and private sector representatives to share policy insights and actions that are delivering real results across the MENA region, including in fragile contexts.

The discussion placed particular emphasis on efforts to support women entrepreneurs, including initiatives that improve access to finance, create inclusive ecosystems, and strengthen the enabling environment for women-led businesses. Speakers reflected on lessons learned, innovative partnerships, and scalable solutions that are transforming vision into action.
 

With Official Development Assistance (ODA) declining for the first time in five years, there is an urgent need to diversify sources of financing to advance gender equality and support women entrepreneurs in the MENA region. Following up on the gender dimensions of the Sevilla Commitment, this interactive session – co-led by Plan Catalyst and OECD – explored the current financing landscape, including impact investing, blended finance, and other innovative mechanisms, and examine how these tools can expand access to capital for women-led businesses. The session featured key case studies showcasing successful models of gender-smart and innovative finance. Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) and other leading stakeholders shared practical experiences, highlight challenges, and discuss strategies to make finance more responsive to the needs of women entrepreneurs across the region. Interactive discussions with participants helped identify opportunities for replication and outline concrete pathways to scale these mechanisms through multi-stakeholder collaboration.

This session built on the 2025 OECD publication on Bridging the Finance Gap for Women Entrepreneurs and will examine how digitalisation, including fintech solutions, crowdfunding platforms and other digital financial services, can expand women entrepreneurs’ access to finance in Southern Mediterranean countries. The discussion explored the benefits and challenges of digitalisation, ranging from reduced transaction costs, broader market reach notably for rural women entrepreneurs, and alterative credit scoring to barriers such as limited digital literacy, access gaps, regulatory constraints and concerns around security and trust. The session also discussed the policy implications of these developments and examples of ongoing initiatives from the region as well as international examples with an emphasis on their transferability to the region.

All registered participants were cordially invited to attend a Gala Dinner, hosted by the Government of Jordan.

As part of the EU–OECD project on access to finance, National Action Plans (NAPs) were developed for Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestinian Authority and Tunisia. These NAPs highlight priority initiatives aimed at improving financial inclusion for women entrepreneurs. The session started with a presentation of the NAPs and selected initiatives with strong potential for scaling up or inspiring replication across MENA. Designed as an interactive working session, it then brought together participants from across the region to engage in peer-learning to enhance women entrepreneurs’ access to finance in MENA. In mixed-country groups, participants exchanged experiences, identify good practices, and co-developped actionable recommendations to strengthen women’s access to finance. The session also focused on practical strategies for resource mobilisation, helping countries use their NAPs as fundraising and advocacy tools.

Working group rapporteurs presented and consolidated insights from across countries. Participants validated policy recommendations, highlighted cross-country lessons, and identified approaches for mobilising resources for women’s entrepreneurship. The session also served as a platform to align national priorities with regional and global initiatives, ensuring that the NAPs become powerful instruments for advancing women’s economic empowerment.