On the 2nd December 2020, GrowthAfrica’s Project Catalysts in Malawi , Oganive Chingakule and Postar Chikaoneka had the opportunity to meet Eyal David, Deputy Ambassador and Deputy Permanent Representative in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel in Nairobi, Kenya and also accredited to Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, Seychelles, and to the UN organizations based in Nairobi.
This Malawi tour – notably – included a delegation affiliated to Mashav (Israel’s Agency for International Development Cooperation in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs). The agency is responsible for designing, coordinating, and implementing the State of Israel’s worldwide development and cooperation programs in developing countries.
As another layer to a broader agenda of how Malawi and Israel can better collaborate in the future, the meeting that GrowthAfrica was part of centred on exploring possibilities of further contributing to the enhancement of the Malawian entrepreneurial ecosystem by drawing lessons from Israel’s past success.
Being first-hand beneficiaries of the Mashav courses, we had our project catalyst, Oganive Chingakule, recently attend a course on the same topic. The meeting gave us an opportunity to engage Mr. David on lessons learned from the course.
The Mashav courses built a foundation for further dialogue on locally-driven and contextualized innovative approaches to supporting Malawian entrepreneurs in critical sectors such as agribusiness and technology.
Research is central to Israel’s progress in ecosystem building, and this echoes GrowthAfrica’s commitment to collecting, analysing, and utilising data as a tool to understand ecosystem needs better.
Further engagement with Mashav will follow on leveraging the existing business acceleration and business development support platforms that GrowthAfrica is an integral part of in Malawi and other African countries.
These entities’ coming together demonstrates the potential for cross-regional public and private sector stakeholders to participate in entrepreneurial support collaborations that can address critical issues pertinent to Malawi’s development, such as limited agro-technology.
Also in attendance, at the same meeting were Chifuniro Kandaya of Flame Tree Initiative and Dr. Victor Mithi of the Society of Medical Doctors (SMD) in Malawi. The former is a frequent collaborator with GrowthAfrica.
