Abstract:
The motive of this study was to assess factors affecting the performance of medium and small
enterprise in Dire Dawa administration. The issue of women entrepreneurs’ performance still
presents unique challenges in terms of effectively addressing what factors affects entrepreneurs
and also there are no sufficient studies in Ethiopia concerning factors affecting women
entrepreneurs’ performance. To overcome this problem few published studies which conducted
in Ethiopia focused on Addis Ababa sub cities. But, on the dire dawa city level, there is a scarce
study. Generally, the study aims to study factors that affecting of the performance of women
entrepreneurs in Dire Dawa Administration. Specifically it aims to examine factors affecting the
performance of women entrepreneurs and to determine factors affecting women entrepreneurs’
performance. The research questions, is centered on the perception of women entrepreneurs of
selected Dire Dawa administration towards performance. This research was carried out through
cross-sectional survey design and mainly based on data collected through questionnaires. Target
population of survey study were 1020 and 287 sample respondents were selected from target
population by Yamane formula and also stratified sampling technique was applied to
proportionate sample size from each stratum and then simple random method was used to select
entrepreneurs within stratum. The study was analyzed in quantitative study approaches,
questionnaire with five point Likert scale used for quantitative explanation which were filled by
women entrepreneurs, and finally, it was processed and analyzed by (SPSS) version 26 and the
other statistical methods including descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. The descriptive
and inferential statistical tools such as; mean, percentage, correlation and multiple regressions
were used to analyze collected data. Based on a finding of regression analysis result, all the
independent variables had relatively strong significant and direct effect on entrepreneurs
performance with p value <0.05. Based on the research results, it is recommended for the
selected women entrepreneurs to improve share experiences, knowledge, skills and attitudes
with other women entrepreneurs in other cities and regions so that they can learn a lot from best
practices of those entrepreneurs, carrying out depth research, continuously evaluating
performance, reviewing suggestion box and act accordingly
