African governments increasingly support large-scale women’s groups interventions aiming to improve women’s economic empowerment with support from multilateral donors and Foundations. Previous evidence indicates that women’s savings, producer, and livelihoods groups can improve women’s access to savings and credit, and human as well as social capital, but it is less clear if the findings of existing evidence are transferable to women’s groups without a discernible focus on financial inclusion or livelihoods. This study uses nationally representative longitudinal data from Nigeria and a large longitudinal dataset from Uganda to examine the association between exposure to women’s groups, asset ownership and decision-making power. The results suggest small yet positive associations between exposure to women’s groups, asset ownership and decision-making power. However, most results do not remain statistically significant after controlling for individual-level fixed effects. The findings highlight the importance of triangulating results of experimental and quasi-experimental studies of specific women’s group interventions with estimates from nationally representative data to understand the transferability of impact evaluation findings.

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