After five years of implementation and support to African Business Incubators and Empowering Entrepreneurial Ecosystems across BIC Africa project wrapped up its activities with strong engagement across the continent – boosting business incubation capacity, empowering entrepreneurs, strengthening innovation ecosystems.
The BIC Africa project was part of the EU Programme ‘Support to Entrepreneurship and MSME creation (Business Incubators)’, featuring two components:
- Five Country Projects that aimed to establish/consolidate business incubators in Somalia, Angola, Ethiopia, Madagascar and Comoros.
- A Regional Network, BIC Africa, to provide the Country Projects and its respective incubators with dedicated capacity building and networking support, while delivering softer networking services to the wider incubation ecosystem in the region.
The BIC Africa project, funded by the European Union (EU) and implemented by EBN (European Business and Innovation Centre Network), supported selected African business incubators (BIs) in stimulating entrepreneurship and creating and consolidating new innovative start-ups, with a specific focus on youth and women.
Over the past five years, BIC Africa worked closely with EU delegations, Country Projects, and ecosystem stakeholders across Angola, Ethiopia, Somalia, Madagascar, Comoros, and Tanzania toward a shared goal: strengthening business incubation ecosystems, empowering entrepreneurs, and fostering connections between African and European innovation ecosystems.
BIC Africa successfully reinforced the capacities of more than 100 business support organisations across the region, contributing to stronger organisational structures, more sustainable business models, and improved service delivery to entrepreneurs. The impact of these achievements is expected to extend well beyond the lifetime of the programme, creating lasting benefits for entrepreneurial ecosystems. Beyond BIC Africa regional programme impact, 6000+ startups/companies received business incubation support services through the Country Projects.
BIC Africa facilitated capacity building programmes helping BIs to improve their organisational capacity and quality of services, enabled better connections between European and African innovation ecosystems to develop intercontinental and international collaboration, and organised a tailored business acceleration programme for women entrepreneurs from Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as Annual Gatherings and networking events.
Tailored capacity‑building was delivered to more than 700 business incubation professionals from 100+ organisations through boot camps and virtual trainings. This support helped them to strengthen their business strategy, organisational systems and to deliver higher‑quality services. As a result, these incubators supported over 6000 entrepreneurs and startups across Africa. Around 30 incubation managers and staff also took part in international exchanges in Africa and Europe, benefiting from soft‑landing programmes, staff exchanges and the European Boot Camp – strengthening the connection between African and European innovation hubs and opening doors for potential collaboration and new business opportunities.
Today, the BIC Africa Network connects more than 100 business support organisations across the region. Over the years, these interactions have helped create meaningful connections and foster a growing community of incubators, entrepreneurs and ecosystem stakeholders who continue to learn from one another and explore opportunities for collaboration.
The project also supported 140 women entrepreneurs from Sub‑Saharan Africa through six cohorts of online business acceleration and training, helping them grow and scale their ventures. It also convened four Annual Gatherings with over 400 stakeholders and hosted six online knowledge‑exchange sessions for aspiring and early-stage African Entrepreneurs to connect and learn from successful African Diaspora Entrepreneurs and innovators. In addition, 34 Business Support Organisations completed a recognised quality assessment process, strengthening their readiness for future certification and improving incubation standards across the five country projects. These achievements represent only a snapshot of the key milestones reached however the impact of BIC Africa’s work was broader and goes far beyond them and has generated a much larger, lasting impact with practical models for supporting innovation and empowering entrepreneurial ecosystems.
The project team has worked closely with the Country Projects, implementing partners, EU Delegations and key ecosystem stakeholders. This collaboration enabled the successful achievement of major milestones and helped ensure that the project’s impact will be replicated and sustained beyond the project.
BIC Africa wrapped up its activities with strong engagement across the continent and boosting the African business incubation ecosystems and empowering entrepreneurs to strengthen entrepreneurship and contributing to decent job creation and sustainable livelihoods.
We would like to express our sincere thanks to the EU, the Country Projects, implementing partners, business incubators, the EU delegations and all stakeholders across Africa and Europe for their support and contribution throughout this journey. A special thanks to the dedicated project team whose commitment and hard work made the successful implementation of the BIC Africa project possible.