Articles Tagged with

Entrepreneurship

Home / Entrepreneurship
Blog

DSTI’s Ecosystems mapping exercise provides a roadmap for recommendations towards further strengthening and development of Sierra Leone’s tech and entrepreneurial ecosystem.

After the Global Entrepreneurship Index was released in 2019, Sierra Leone ranked 131 out of 137 Countries, scoring an average of 12% on product innovation, startup skills, technology absorption, human capital development, and other entrepreneurship-related indicators.

The ecosystems unit at the Directorate Science, Technology, and Innovation was determined to reverse the downward spiral and map out a national ecosystem focusing on digital entrepreneurship in Sierra Leone. This DSTI led effort attracted several development partners who made financial and moral commitments, most notably, the United Nations Capital Development Fund and United Nations Development Fund. The latter committed almost 100% of the funds to get the initiative off the ground, and the former pledged to provide logistical support through an accelerator lab. 

Unfortunately, before the initiative could formally take off, the COVID pandemic struck, and this, for obvious reasons, delayed the inception of the project. Nevertheless, the project started at the end of 2020 after receiving funds from both UN agencies and the green light from DSTI leadership to proceed.

The project commenced with discussions amongst a varied group of stakeholders to streamline the dialogue that describes experiences, constraints and opportunities in the current Sierra Leonean technology and entrepreneurial space. The Stakeholders included community leaders, local entrepreneurs and industry professionals from key sectors such as agriculture, health, and education.

The stakeholder consultations provided opportunities for learning and developing appropriate and viable approach(es) to guaranteeing that the needs of stakeholders are met by providing a conducive space to share real-life experiences and test project assumptions about the tech and entrepreneurship space in Sierra Leone. 

A significant task of this project was to conduct an inclusive stakeholder consultation. The national stakeholder consultation was held from December 16 – 21, 2020, in Bo, Kenema, Makeni, Port Loko and Freetown, and the diaspora consultation was held from February 15 -17 (North America, Europe/Africa, and Asia/Australia).  

The talks were held to get a definitive overview of the operations currently being undertaken in the technology and entrepreneurship landscape.

This serves to furnish government and development partners with insight into existing and emerging issues within the ecosystem, as well as understanding relationships, dependencies, and critical considerations in the mapping process. The information gathered from the consultations framed the research strategy for the mapping process, particularly research targets, areas of focus, and promoting the digitalisation of sectors to leverage growth and provide inclusive platforms for human capital development.

 The stakeholder consultations were instrumental in raising the issues perceived to be vital in understanding the technology and entrepreneurship ecosystem. The composition of stakeholders was wide and varied, and thus their collective voices offered an array of fresh perspectives. Their recommendations were adopted to form part of the ecosystems mapping project as the public’s viewpoints on tech and entrepreneurship in Sierra Leone. 

A picture containing text, wall, indoor, screen

Description automatically generated

After engagements of entrepreneurial stakeholders both home and abroad, the team embarked on a nationwide research. The purpose of the research was to investigate and produce data to support the following objectives;

  •  Identify gaps in the policy and regulatory frameworks of the technology ecosystem 
  • Provide a basis for policy action to address these gaps and support growth and sustainability of the ecosystem:
  •  Obtain data that informs policies and development interventions for micro, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Sierra Leone. 

  The graph shows the percentage of submission success rate from the fieldwork. 

page12image60211408

The project concluded with a soft launch led by the DSTI Ecosystem Manager to exhibit the digital tool, including a report presentation that will educate entrepreneurs and investors about the ecosystem and how to use it. The ecosystem team discussed what the project means for the future of doing business in Sierra Leone.

The participants included partners from UNCDF, SLEDP, SMEDA, and INVEST SALONE, along with Fix Solution, the company working with DSTI to develop the web application. 

The keynote speaker Dr. Francis Kaikai, Minister of Planning and Economic Development, in his address emphasised that “the output from the research including the business digest and the associated data analytics will certainly be of immense benefit to business development, academia [education], and other intellectual communities”. 

The tool and the report are scheduled for an official launch by the end of September 2021.  This launch promises many possibilities for growth, development and advancement for Sierra Leone’s tech and ecosystem Space.

.“The purpose is to curate a refined tool enabling investors and policymakers to develop a fresh perspective and guided sense of Sierra Leone’s potential for economic growth.” – Mahmoud Javombo, Ecosystems Manager, DSTI.

Blog

Africa’s master connector is in Sierra Leone to develop the entrepreneurship ecosystem

Emeka Okafor is a leader in the African maker and entrepreneurship space. For over two decades, he has connected innovators with the resources they need to access local, regional, and global markets. He has taken on a new challenge as Ecosystem Accelerator Lead working with the Directorate of Science, Technology, and Innovation at the Office of the President in Sierra Leone.

The ecosystem strengthening is made possible by a grant from the UNICEF Innovation Fund in New York as part of the ongoing partnership between DSTI and UNICEF in Sierra Leone. The Innovation Fund invests in problem solvers, increases open source intellectual property and grows solutions that can bring results for children. 

Emeka Okafor
Ecosystems Accelerator Lead, DSTI Sierra Leone

Okafor is a venture strategist and entrepreneur from Nigeria by way of New York. He is co-founder of the TED Fellows Program and the lead curator of TED Global in Africa.  He has advised governments and world leaders on innovation and entrepreneurship systems and policy for Africa, including President Obama’s Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) and the U.S. State Department.

Okafor works with DSTI’s team to plan, promote, manage, and support the development of a collaborative and enabling ecosystem for the growth of entrepreneurial activity.

In the most recent Global Entrepreneurship Index released in 2019, Sierra Leone ranked 131 of 137 countries, scoring just 12% on product innovation, startup skills, technology absorption, human capital and other indicators used to measure the health of the entrepreneurship ecosystem-a network of self-regulating attitudes, resources, actors and infrastructure in any given country. Understanding the importance of innovation and enterprise to value creation and economic development, H.E. President Julius Maada Bio launched DSTI with a mandate to transform one of Africa’s least developing countries into a hub for innovation and entrepreneurship.

“We hope that this work will impact those who are most disadvantaged; young people and children as much as it would be of advantage to those who are more privileged.  If you look at it as the components that make up the human body, nothing works if everything isn’t working well,” said Okafor.

“If you want to make improvements for those who are more vulnerable, like children, improve the ecosystem to allow incomes to rise, allow for the creation of wealth, which ultimately leads to greater revenues for the government that they’re able to reinvest into key public needs.”

Okafor and DSTI’s ecosystems team will work to strengthen Sierra Leone’s ecosystem across industry, manufacturing, agro-processing, tourism, and technology. The objective is to focus on reducing inefficiencies while bringing together different stakeholders and components that work together. So far, the team has engaged with government agencies, SME organizations, and entrepreneurs to listen and learn. The output of these engagements will be used to build a framework that will form the backbone of the ecosystem map.

“Once this is done, the next phase is local, regional, and global resource mobilization,” said Okafor.

“When you bring the right kind of people together, and the right kind of people could be just as much a market woman who is exceptional at selling palm oil in a rural district, as it could be someone who’s coding in Freetown. I don’t make that distinction. For me, it’s about finding producers and creators to knit together productive networks.  And when you have government backing as you do here to create the policies and regulations to remove impediments, then acceleration can and does happen quickly.”

The mapped ecosystem will be a dynamic tool that will increase and facilitate the connection of producers to resources and give policymakers the data they need to improve service delivery.  Furthermore, it will place local entrepreneurs and investors in a better position to identify opportunities in Sierra Leone.


About Exponent

Exponent is a modern business theme, that lets you build stunning high performance websites using a fully visual interface. Start with any of the demos below or build one on your own.

Get Started
Subscribe to our Newsletter
Privacy Settings
We use cookies to enhance your experience while using our website. If you are using our Services via a browser you can restrict, block or remove cookies through your web browser settings. We also use content and scripts from third parties that may use tracking technologies. You can selectively provide your consent below to allow such third party embeds. For complete information about the cookies we use, data we collect and how we process them, please check our Privacy Policy
Youtube
Consent to display content from Youtube
Vimeo
Consent to display content from Vimeo
Google Maps
Consent to display content from Google
Spotify
Consent to display content from Spotify
Sound Cloud
Consent to display content from Sound