Advancing our ecosystem through collaboration

Activity-based Training-of-Trainers (ToT) among African entrepreneur support peers and partners should be essential to building and advancing our #ecosystems.

The best and most relevant ToT is based on collaboration and support on actual activities or projects – rather than detached from our daily work.

Developing and supporting entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs across Africa demands more collaboration and less reinventing of the wheel.

It was a delight to host Matilda Eriksson and Luidmila Comé from MUVA for a week of Training of Trainers and knowledge sharing supporting the development of the EU-supported Mozambican “Promove programme”. The purpose of the #ToT was to share knowledge and show GrowthAfrica’s methodology in action. Not only in theory but also doing a deep dive into how the GrowthAfrica Catalysts offer support to #entrepreneurs.

The “Promove programme” is a MUVA lead project that focuses on supporting the development of #Mozambican Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) focused on #gender and #jobcreation in the northern city of #Pemba and #Maputo. GrowthAfrica supports MUVA and the “Promove programme” with programming, execution expertise, and experience developing the MUVA team’s capacity to deliver impactful support to the targeted Mozambican entrepreneurs.

“It was great to share this with Matilda Eriksson and Luidmila Comé and have them present during our catalytic entrepreneur support sessions and attend one of the ongoing workshops in Nairobi, Kenya. Going through this process was insightful as it also triggered positive self-retrospection. An epiphany moment was connecting and viewing our operations from an M&E perspective. How do we collect data and use it to make data-driven decisions for the future? “Kathryn Mumbua, GrowthAfrica Project Associate.

“Connecting with GrowthAfrica, working and learning from each other has been an amazing experience. It was amazing to see GrowthAfrica’s methodology in action. This knowledge-sharing opportunity and evidence-based learning gave us insight into entrepreneurship in Kenya, allowing us to compare and contrast with what happens in the Mozambique context. It has also created room for analysing and understanding what aspects are working, what can we learn from this process and what we do differently when running accelerator programmes for SMEs in Mozambique.” Matilda Eriksson.

We are excited to see the work and impact the” Promove programme” will create for Mozambique’s small growing business ecosystem.

More collaboration and peer-to-peer support within the African entrepreneurship ecosystem will improve the business success rate on the continent. GrowthAfrica is delighted to be part of this journey, and we call on funders and Entrepreneur Support Organisations to partner with us to scale up the ecosystem.