Enrich in Africa is an ICT-58 Project funded by the European Commission through the Horizon 2020 work programme, running from 2021 – 2023. The 2022 Congress was centered on discussions with acceleration and Incubation experts, business executives, and entrepreneurs from Africa and Europe on the mutual future for Innovation Cooperation. It also aims to explore outcomes, and tangible actions of current collaborative policy roadmaps for the business and Innovation Markets of Africa and Europe. The target groups were incubation and accelerator experts, innovation facilitators, SMEs and entrepreneurs, Corporates (Innovative solutions to improve the product and distribution) and investors.

There were 3-panel sessions at the event, namely;

• Digital Innovation Hubs and the Future of Digitalisation; this had the ICT 58 family members as panelists and Promise Mwakale represented AfriConEU. Promise shared our wins on the AfriConEU Project, which includes the importance of having the fusion of Government, SMEs and DIHs as a pyramid for the successful implementation of Innovation policies in Africa and Europe. 
• Case studies from EU-Africa Collaborating Entrepreneurs. This panel centered on the experiences, learnings and challenges of startups from Africa as it concerns scaling into the European Market. The Startups are;
  • Primed E-Health
  • Adirelounge
  • Forestry & Citrus Research
  • Yobande Express

• Tales from the Innovation Ecosystem – How Enrich in Africa Champions have supported Europe and Africa’s innovation ecosystems.

The event provided the AfriConEU project an opportunity to bond with the other ICT 58 family project members, create synergies with other key players in the Innovation Ecosystem as well providing opportunities to exchange learnings, ideas, wins and challenges while identifying potential partnerships for the remaining duration of the project.

You can find more details about the event on our Twitter.