DEER
Dignity, Employment & Enterprise Reform
The DEER Programme is Malkia Africa Network's focused policy research and advocacy initiative on the intersection of women's dignity, labour rights, and formal economic participation. It is funded through our partnership with the Atlas Network's Ease of Employment, Livelihood, and Formality Fund (ELIF).
DEER is the hybrid model in its most concentrated form: a single thematic programme that runs the entire Evidence to Influence pipeline from structured field observation through to targeted regulatory engagement.
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One programme, full pipeline
DEER runs field evidence and policy influence together, from observation to regulatory reform.
Field Lab Engagement
DEER engages women workers, informal entrepreneurs, and enterprise owners to document the regulatory and compliance barriers that keep their economic activity informal. We quantify the money, time, and opportunity cost of compliance, the processes that block formal registration, and the rules that disadvantage women workers.
Policy Arm Output
DEER's Policy Arm converts field evidence into reform. It produces proposals on the registration and labour rules that push women into informality, publishes policy briefs and economic impact analyses on the cost of women's informal confinement, and engages labour ministries and financial regulators directly.
The Champagne Moment
DEER's success metric is not the number of women engaged, but the specific regulatory or legislative change that removes a documented barrier to women's formal economic participation. That is the champagne moment: a regulation reformed, not a cohort graduated.
