Good Practices, Lessons, Opportunities, and Challenges in the Care Economy in Ethiopia

Between 2020 and 2023, UN Women and ILO implemented the joint programme “Promoting decent employment for women through inclusive growth policies and investments in the care economy”. One of the outcomes of the programme is to support government and relevant stakeholders to promote investment in the care economy. This paper has been developed in support of that outcome. While initiatives to promote care work and increase investments in the care economy have increased in Ethiopia, there remains a lack of understanding of the full spectrum of issues in relation to paid and unpaid care work. This publication aims to address this lack of understanding and contributes to the documentation of good practices, opportunities, challenges and lessons learned from initiatives that provide care services in Ethiopia’s formal and informal sectors. It offers policy-makers and development practitioners knowledge and evidence that could be replicated and scaled up elsewhere.