FAST – Supporting the structuring of women’s entrepreneurship in Tunisia

Helping the Tunisian Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations structure and boost the entrepreneurial ecosystem and promote women’s entrepreneurship in Tunisia.

FAST was implemented by the Tunisian Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations with technical assistance from Expertise France. It aimed to assist entrepreneurship support structures, in line with the needs of the sector, in order to contribute to combating youth unemployment and boost entrepreneurship, especially by women.

This project follows on from the ENLIEN project which has been supporting private and public structures in Tunisia’s entrepreneurial ecosystem since 2018.

Find out more about the ENLIEN project

Boosting the entrepreneurship ecosystem

The FAST project aimed to help strengthen and structure the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Tunisia by financing programmes with three components.

Component 1: Support acceleration programmes that provide financial leverage

The FAST project financed the technical assistance proposed by accelerators in order to encourage them to offer equity financing, loans or any other product to project initiators.

Component 2: Support incubation structures for women in the regions

These support structures were all led by women in the regions, outside Greater Tunis.

Component 3: Partnerships with large companies

FAST supported programmes to build more links between start-ups/MSMEs and mid-cap companies and large companies to accelerate the development of the activity of these microenterprises/start-ups.

Key figures

• 788 projects were supported during the project, 82% of which were led by women. Half of these projects had a social and/or environmental impact.
• 1834 jobs were created thanks to this project.