Youth Enterprise With Innovation in Nigeria (YouWiN!) Program Impact Evaluation 2011-2016 (Nigeria)
Abstract
The Youth Enterprise With Innovation in Nigeria (YouWiN!) program is a large-scale national business plan competition for young entrepreneurs in Nigeria. The program is a collaboration between Nigeria's Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Communication Technology, and the Ministry of Youth Development with support from Department for International Development (DFID) and the World Bank. The program's objective is to encourage innovation and job creation through the establishment of new businesses and expansion of existing businesses.
The competition attracted almost 24,000 applicants. Random assignment was used to select some of the winners from a pool of semi-finalists, with US$36 million in randomly allocated grant funding providing each winner with an average of US$50,000.
The follow-up surveys targeted 3,139 individuals comprised of four groups who had applied to the first round of the YouWiN! competition. Baseline data was collected in December 2011 - January 2012. Four follow-up surveys were taken, approximately at yearly intervals after individuals had applied for the program. The last, fourth round, was conducted in July - November 2016.