On February 3rd, 2022, Porto Business School organized a virtual workshop titled “Development of the Trans-Continental Partnership”. The workshop aimed to co-design a program focused on Africa-Europe partnerships in the innovation ecosystem, particularly between DIHs.

Ana Aleixo, INOVA+, Project Manager at the Research and Innovation Unit, opened the discussion introducing to the participants the mission and the vision of the  AfriConEU Project.

Our moderator, Rui Coutinho, Executive Director of the Innovation Ecosystem at Nova SBE, analyzed the needs, opportunities, and recommendations of Europe-Africa partnership building from the perspective of a representative of the European innovation ecosystem. He highlighted the need for “Europe to deeply understand Africa, without bias”.

The workshop continued with the contribution of Dr. Gordon Kwesi Adomdza, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Professor, focusing on the challenges and opportunities of Europe-Africa partnership building. The discussion gave prominence to the need for faster development as far as digital inclusion is concerned. “It’s now the time to help the start-up ecosystem to become digital”, as he mentioned. 

Finally, the participants took part in co-design sessions of the program facilitated by Gideon Brefo, Chief Executive Officer at HapaSpace Collaborative Hub, Joseph Gaylord, Project Manager at dpixel, Magda Bakali, Junior Researcher at Stimmuli and Sasa Straus, Senior Expert at ITC Cluster, defining the thematic areas, foreseen outcomes, objectives, structure, tools and methods through experience sharing. After that, all of the groups reconvened in the plenary session, where they presented their findings and continued to discuss their respective themes with the other groups.

The event was live-streamed on Twitter.