“USAID’s focus was on supporting Al Hariri to produce new products, especially in the fight against COVID-19, making them available to the Ministry of Health, quarantine centers, public and private hospitals, and NGOs. The new jobs being created protect those providing care for families and reduce unemployment caused by the health crisis.” -- Mr. Fadhel Al Hariri; General Manager, Al Hariri Company

In the wake of the COVID-19 crisis in Yemen, the Umm Al Banat Art Center for Women’s Training faced a serious dilemma—adapt or go out of business. The center is a women-led social enterprise located in Khore Makser, Aden that previously specialized in manufacturing clothing. With the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic, however, demand for its products sank and sales plummeted. At the same time, demand for personal protective equipment (PPE) and hospital-grade clothing took off rapidly, offering Umm Al Banat an opportunity to realign its production and re-launch itself as a profitable business.

On its own, Umm Al Banat did not have the organizational capacity to alter its production to make specialized hospital scrubs and garments. Its systems and management practices were ill equipped to meet the mandated quantity or quality standards. With help from the USAID Yemen Economic Stabilization and Success (YESS) project, however, the company successfully transformed its processes and started producing PPE, generating 15 new jobs for women during May and June 2020.

Yemen is facing the coronavirus pandemic with a healthcare system that has been decimated by years of war. The fighting has displaced millions of people, many of whom now live in overcrowded conditions with limited sanitation. In this context, the use of protective gear and supplies to help stem the spread of the coronavirus has taken on particular urgency. Along with the rising demand for hospital-grade PPE, there also is a strong market for non-medical face masks, hand sanitizer, and bleach-based cleaning products to help protect people from the disease.

The YESS program engages with small and medium-sized businesses working in high-growth sectors as part of USAID’s focus on high impact enterprise-driven development. It embraces market-based approaches as a way of taking business and economic growth to scale for more sustainable outcomes. The team collaborates with growth-oriented companies to provide technical assistance, and to identify the main constraints hindering their ability to expand and seize new market opportunities. With tailored action plans, USAID helps them put into place  modern management strategies and systems for increasing their competitiveness and generating sustainable job creation. 

For the Umm Al Banat Association, YESS experts analyzed conditions impeding the changeover to the manufacturing of medical-grade and other protective gear. They worked with the company to standardize production processes, increase production capacity, and improve production quality. They facilitated upgrading controls to ensure that Umm Al Banat would be in compliance with international standards for medical protective suits, staff scrubs, patient gowns, and non-medical face masks. 

Similarly, the USAID YESS team worked with Al-Smawi Hospital Supplies, a company located in Ta’izz Governorate employing 38 people. The firm’s management was eager to scale up its production to manufacture hand sanitizer and antibacterial cleaning products, but the company was unable to meet rigorous international quality standards. USAID YESS experts helped devise a strategy to improve internal processes across all the stages of production, and to increase the output by 60 percent. 

“YESS technical advisory support has introduced a financial and control system of laboratories that has met our company’s needs. It supported the development of an urgent plan to respond to market demand that includes production, distribution, financing, and operations – along with the financing to meet requirements and increase our product output,” says Mostafa Al Smawi, President of Al Smawi Company. “This intervention will enable us to produce 80,000 facemasks and 10,000 medical protective suits per month, and create 10 new jobs.”

Likewise, USAID is supporting the Al Hariri Medicine and Medical Supplies Company in Aden to scale up its production of medical equipment, disinfectants, and hand sanitizer in response to high demand. The company now is applying new production processes in compliance with international standards, and already has created four new positions in warehousing and administration. 

“Our sister company, Al-Noor Pharmaceuticals, delivered medicines, medical supplies and equipment, and special disinfectants to [COVID-19] isolation centers throughout Yemen,” notes Fadel Al Hariri, the company’s General Manager.

The COVID-19 pandemic is likely to have devastating consequences for Yemen, further straining the country’s battered resources, infrastructure, and response capacity. As Yemen faces the global and local disruptions of the coronavirus crisis, USAID will continue to identify and follow-through on innovative approaches that build enterprise competitiveness and increase private sector growth. It will bolster the country’s response capacity by bringing best practices to bear not only in this era of crisis, but for the country’s long-term sustainable development.

USAID’s Yemen Economic Stabilization and Success (YESS) activity supports self-reliance and resilience by facilitating trade, increasing employment, supporting sustainable livelihoods, and stabilizing crucial macroeconomic policy issues. YESS is part of the USAID Middle East Economic Growth Best Practices Project (MEG), which provides knowledge and tools to support economic growth and reform across the Middle East and North Africa.