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International Partnerships
Project

Supporting Sub Saharan Africa’s small businesses

Incubator project

The Regional Network will be a platform to support business incubation in Sub Saharan Africa, with a focus on Angola, Somalia Ethiopia and Madagascar. The network will support entrepreneurship and the creation of micro-, small-, and medium enterprises (MSME), create decent jobs and make access to markets and value chains more inclusive for young people and women.

Whilst the number of business incubators and accelerators in Africa has grown exponentially, the number of successful start-ups on the continent has not grown at the same rate. The Regional Network is targeting these business incubators, which are well placed to spark a wider impact in society in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Knowledge sharing and learning among business incubators

The network will encourage knowledge sharing and learning among business incubation programmes and connect them to similar networks. It will support selected business incubators to:

  • define sustainable business models for their own organisations
  • improve management skills of incubators’ staff
  • develop incubation support services and programmes covering the whole incubation chain, from idea prototyping to scaling
  • connect to funders (either public funders on private investors) to prepare or improve incubatees’ access to finance
  • establish and tighten linkages with other national and international research, development and innovation actors
  • connect with European innovation hubs and build collaborations
  • explore business opportunities with European companies
Incubator project

Funding instrument

11th EDF

Implementing organisations

EBN innovation network