- Published by
- Tandem
The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation's MarketMakers programme ran between 2012-2023 in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It focused on building a better environment for private enterprises to create employment for young women and men - linking up actors in the employment market, promoting self-employment and tackling sectoral development constraints.
This ex-post evaluation examines five intervention areas through in-depth 'deep-dives':
- BPO and IT sector promotion
- e-commerce
- student employment reforms
- non-formal education
- freelancing
For each, it documents what changed during the programme and how much of that change has been sustained, replicated or scaled by market actors since closure.
The picture that emerges is mixed but broadly encouraging. Formally constituted industry associations in BPO, IT and e-commerce have proven durable, growing their membership and services independently.
Information platforms with a clear institutional home have fared better than those dependent on a single individual or organisation without strong enough incentive to maintain them.
Company academies showed uneven sustainability - non-IT firms performed better than IT firms, where market shifts and AI disruption eroded the original rationale.
The ability to influence policy remains an unresolved weakness across all five areas, and government incentive schemes that were secured often saw low uptake.
Thirteen recommendations cover project design, consortium formation, sustainability planning, donor enabling conditions and association-building.