Reproducibility package for Testing the promise of digital scaling: in-person vs. app-based training for women entrepreneurs

Business training has long been a staple of development policy, with annual expenditures exceeding USD 1 billion in low- and middle-income countries. The vast majority of training is delivered in person, but there is growing interest in alternative modalities to deliver at scale. Digital delivery offers the potential to enhance impact, cost-effectiveness, and accessibility — especially for women, who may face constraints on their time and mobility. Challenges may include gaps in digital skills, and ensuring participants’ engagement. We conduct a randomized controlled trial to evaluate a business training program targeted at women entrepreneurs in Ethiopia. We test two modalities: a smartphone app, or in-person sessions, versus a control group. Our findings reveal high initial take-up rates for both modalities (over 75%), but a significant disparity in completion rates (22% for the digital training, versus 71% for the in-person training). These results suggest that the potential of digital platforms for scaling up business training must be carefully tested, and treated with caution. Despite the high take-up of in-person training, we observed negligible impacts on business practices and performance from either modality. This finding underscores the stylized fact that business training alone may offer limited benefits for women entrepreneurs.