Across developing countries, but especially in Africa, governments and development actors are investing in youth entrepreneurship to address growing unemployment and build more resilient economies. For example, in July of this year, the African Development Bank launched the Youth Entrepreneurship Investment Bank, an initiative committed to supporting 30,000 youth-led businesses, generating 120,000 jobs, and unlocking up to $500 million in lending for youth enterprises across Liberia. And earlier this spring, the World Bank approved $250 million in funding to support youth employment opportunities and foster entrepreneurship and institutional capacity building in Angola.
Typically, this sort of funding supports direct implementation projects led by local non-profits or international non-governmental organizations (INGOs), which have demonstrated success in delivering training and other services aimed at accelerating youth-led businesses. However, while donors are increasingly seeking to partner with local non-profits, many of these actors face limitations in capacity, systems and tools.
International NGOs can play a vital role in helping non-profits overcome these challenges by equipping them with the capabilities needed to deliver quality entrepreneurship support at scale. And to maximize these collaborations’ reach and impact, there is a significant opportunity to complement their direct implementation work with systems-level solutions, working through the institutions that already reach young people at scale. These include schools, ministries, universities, religious institutions and public agencies.
That’s the approach taken by BeniBiz, a youth economic empowerment program in Benin funded by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Trade and Development, the Delegation of the European Union to Benin and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. Initially launched as a business accelerator, BeniBiz has expanded its focus to include business incubation, broadening its work across the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Today, the program supports more than 15,000 young entrepreneurs — with the aim of increasing that number to over 100,000 — by working with actors across the entrepreneurial ecosystem to provide them with the skills they need to build prosperous businesses, economies and food-secure communities.
Drawing on lessons from TechnoServe’s experience implementing BeniBiz, this article outlines four key strategies for effectively fostering and scaling collaborations between INGOs, local non-profits and large-scale institutions, with the goal of developing better support ecosystems for young entrepreneurs.
1: Understand the local entrepreneurship support ecosystem
To successfully promote systems change in local entrepreneurship support ecosystems, organizations must begin with a clear understanding of their own local ecosystem, including the structures, actors and barriers that shape support for young entrepreneurs.
To do that, BeniBiz conducted a mapping of entrepreneurship support structures in Benin. We found that while the ecosystem had grown in size, services remained heavily concentrated on business growth, and primarily focused on enterprises in and around the Cotonou area, the country’s largest city and economic hub. This resulted in a lack of services focused on business creation, and excluded entrepreneurs in the rest of the country — which is especially relevant for youth aiming to leverage entrepreneurship as a path to self-employment. Other key challenges included:
- Fragmented coordination between public, private and development sector actors;
- A lack of quality standards and limited monitoring or evaluation.
Most support structures delivered ad hoc, non-formalized services and operated without much evidence of impact — except for international NGOs, which work with funders that specifically require them to report outcomes. These systemic gaps will continue to constrain youth entrepreneurship unless they’re addressed through more coordinated and strategic approaches.
2: Leverage convening power to coordinate local actors
There is an untapped opportunity to reach youth through organizations and institutions already positioned to reach them, such as vocational schools, government ministries, religious institutions and municipal agencies. INGOs can then use their convening power to build shared goals and strengthen coordination among these actors.
To that end, BeniBiz has been facilitating monthly “synergy groups” with private and non-profit stakeholders, creating a space for informal collaboration and shared learning. These groups have been helping to build trust, align objectives and position the program as a neutral connector within the entrepreneurship ecosystem. Today, donors like the EU, Agence Française de Développement and World Bank are leveraging these synergy groups as a key forum for entrepreneurship coordination in Benin.
3: Enable Local Institutions to Scale Impact Through Knowledge Transfer
Many local institutions have both the reach and mandate to support youth, and they stand to benefit from applying globally tested approaches and tools — but they often lack access to this technical knowledge. INGOs can help bridge this gap by sharing proven entrepreneur training curricula, and working together to help local institutions implement globally accepted, evidence-based tools and methodologies.
For example, BeniBiz piloted its entrepreneurship training with 25 entrepreneur support organizations spread across the country — both public and private — before seeking national scale. These early pilots built momentum and credibility, leading to a co-design process with Benin’s Ministry of Secondary, Technical and Vocational Education that is currently in the process of integrating entrepreneurship training into the national curriculum. As a result of their collaboration with BeniBiz, two public universities have revised their offerings, and 24 vocational training centers are in the process of integrating new entrepreneurship programs. The success of this incremental, evidence-driven approach gave institutions the confidence to adopt and scale the model.
4. Test with Institutions Before Scaling Policy Reform
Ministries of labor, employment or workforce development often have mandates to support entrepreneurship, but they struggle to translate those mandates into effective implementation. INGOs can address this need by providing tools, joint facilitation and iterative support that helps build lasting institutional practices.
For instance, BeniBiz trained ministry staff and school teachers through hands-on facilitation, enabling them to observe, adapt and internalize the methodology. The program embedded real-time feedback loops and supported regular reflection and adaptation cycles. These habits — co-created with local stakeholders — foster ownership and improve long-term sustainability.
Today, the program is expanding its reach through a partnership with the Ministry of Social Affairs and Microfinance to deliver entrepreneurship literacy training via local service kiosks that support low-income youth by offering coaching/orientation.
Preparing Ecosystems for the Next Generation of Entrepreneurs
If we want youth entrepreneurship to endure, we must stop building parallel solutions and start investing in the ecosystems that young people already navigate. Programs must be designed not just for service delivery, but for local institutional ownership.
Funders and implementers should ask themselves:
- Are we embedding change in existing ecosystems — or building standalone pilots?
- Are we enabling governments and local actors to adopt and adapt proven tools?
- Are we convening the ecosystem to build shared agendas and trust?
- Are we designing changes that local market actors can sustain — or building solutions that disappear when the project ends?
The next generation of entrepreneurs is ready to transform local economies — in Benin, across Africa and globally. Their local ecosystems need to be ready to support them.
Grégory Valadié is the Chief of Party for TechnoServe’s BeniBiz Project in Benin; Juan Carlos Thomas is the Vice President of Entrepreneurship and New Ventures at TechnoServe.
Photo credit: TechnoServe
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