Agri-Business Incubation Ethiopia

Ethiopia is the second most populous country in Africa, yet remains one of the poorest countries in the world. To steer the development of the country, Ethiopia aims to create 14 million additional jobs for its population by 2025. An important pathway to achieve this is strengthening the agricultural sector, the backbone of the Ethiopian economy. This is where the four year EU-funded project Agri-Business Incubation, or short "BIC Ethiopia", comes in by supporting the Ethiopian incubation ecosystem on each of the three layers of the ecosystem:

• The capacity and organisational sustainability of local incubators is strengthened through the BIC Academy via 1:1 workshops, Training of Trainers and facilitation and moderation support. Further, a network for exchange, peer-learning and collaboration across incubators is strengthened.
• Agri-business and agri-tech enterprises are supported with capacity building - targeting both aspiring entrepreneurs to set up their own enterprise, as well as established enterprises to grow their business and attract funding. Alongside non-financial support, enterprises can apply for grants and loans through the project.
• BIC Ethiopia collaborates with private financing institutions like banks and equity investors to facilitate out-of-the-box thinking to create new financial access opportunities for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs).

In a consortium of partners, adelphi is primarily taking care of the BIC Academy as well as the Financing Facility building on adelphi's long-standing experience in capacity building (based on "toolification") and access to finance mechanisms for MSMEs.