Delivering place based Entrepreneurial capacity building in Africa (DIFFERENTIATE)

Project Duration: October 2021- October 2022

Principal Investigator: Prof. Kirk Semple

Contact detail: k.semple@lancaster.ac.uk 

Project Partner: Dr. Nicholas Ozor

Contact Detail: executivedirector@atpsnet.org

Grantor: British Council

Grant Amount: £ 100,000

Project Description:
Universities play an essential role in creating new knowledge and innovations and training the next generation of leaders, engineers, and scientists. Yet more than half of 420 million young people in Africa are unemployed (AfDB, 2018). The problem, however, is that entrepreneurship is not yet fully integrated into the activities of Universities across Africa, with most universities having no entrepreneurship capabilities or curriculum and a few having limited entrepreneurship training and support for students and staff. There is therefore the need for capacity building our universities through research, innovation, and entrepreneurship This project explores a place-based approach to design and develop entrepreneurial capacity building across African research institutions.

Key Objectives and activities:

1. Develop an approach to capacity building and entrepreneurial ecosystem development that is tailored to local contexts;
2. Move towards solution-driven impact, based on entrepreneurial thinking;
3. Create stronger relationships between Higher Education (HE) institutions, industry and key local stakeholders;
4. Develop entrepreneurship curricula for local, regional, national, and international needs and strives towards more comprehensive economic development.

Expected outcomes:

1. Increased entrepreneurship capacity of staff and students in universities.
2. Support African women innovators and entrepreneurs in the STEM space.
3. Promote Intra-Africa and global collaboration and partnerships.

Project output:

1. Co-development of a toolkit for university students
2. Organise Entrepreneurship Workshop for all the HE partners of the project for students using the toolkit
3. Engagement with all stakeholders of each partner institution of the project