SME Development and
Entrepreneurship
Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) play a key role in Africa’s economic diversification and industrialization.
The sector benefits from the coveted “wealth and reach” factor, enabling shared economic prosperity (wealth) while accelerating economic penetration across Africa (reach), thanks to its flexibility and entrepreneurial skills.
Focus on Women and Youth
The Internet and 4IRs have unleashed the talents of women, youth and entrepreneurs in all demographic categories, even in rural and underserved areas. Through microenterprises, participatory finance and technology solutions, innovative social empowerment programmes are emerging across Africa.
BADEA is amplifying its focus on this grassroots movement, using its own agility and flexibility to respond to the development needs of these SMEs and entrepreneurs, through actors in the third and fourth sector economies (mission-oriented social enterprises, respectively), with special emphasis on women and youth.
Building Human Capacity
SMEs are embedded in the various layers of the African economic fabric, which explains the transversality of this pillar and which overlaps with the other strategic axes. This leads BADEA to consider the exploitation of traditional levers for digital audience acquisition and the development of a specialized online trading platform.
