According to the Landscape Assessment of Retail Micro-Merchants in Bangladesh conducted by UNCDF in 2018, there are more than 2 million people who are involved in the micro merchant retail store in Bangladesh. However, there are only an estimated 94,800 female micro-merchants—or just 8% of the total micro-merchant market. While at an individual level, their businesses are small, together they transact more than $18.42 billion annually and network with millions of customers every day.

Micro merchants play a critical role in providing access to goods and services to millions on customers but the UNCDF study highlighted financial exclusion as well as lack of digital accounts, business training and business development support as some of the key impediments facing micro merchants.

Thus, for ensuring sustainable growth of the country, it is vital provide micro merchants with necessary support such as business utility trainings and business development support.

But capacity building is not just about trainings, it is much more than. Capacity building has always been an essential part of the project as the concept of digitization is quite unfamiliar to micro merchants. But what do we mean by capacity building? For UNCDF Bangladesh, capacity building is more than just providing training. We see capacity building as the process through which individuals obtain, strengthen and maintain the capabilities to set and achieve their own development objectives over time as echoed in the work we do in our MDDRM project.

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