The Support and Training Entrepreneurship Program (STEP) equips aspiring entrepreneurs with the business development training, startup financing and mentoring needed to create new industries, provide jobs that add to the economic wealth and development of their communities.

This dynamic skills training and employment generation venture has greatly boosted the micro-enterprise industry in Mali where it was initiated in 2003, and has been adapted to Burkina Faso where it is in the pilot phase.

Graduates of the STEP initiative have a myriad of opportunities open to them. Many have started their own commercial enterprises and are providing valuable goods and services to their communities, while others have become business consultants offering accounting and entrepreneurial development training to artisans in the region.


The International Finance Corporation’s (IFC) Grassroots Business Initiative (GBI) supports STEP in the following areas:

• Financing the program’s operating costs and international and local consultants for the training of the juniors consultants.
• Providing technical assistance for the development of the program’s strategies and monitoring and evaluation system.
• Helping them source funding and create good credit history and relationships with micro finance institutions and other BDS providers.
• Developing sustainable models that can be replicated in countries.