In early July, NGO Eclosio organised its first Entrepreneurship hackathon in Senegal, in collaboration with the Ministry of Employment, Vocational training and Crafts, the European Union delegation to Senegal, LuxDev, Tekki Fii and GRET. This event for collective reflection and creativity, conducted remotely via digital tools, looked at ways to improve interactions within the ecosystem of young entrepreneurs, with a view to greater inclusion of their needs and aspirations.
Under the auspices of the Ministry in charge of Employment and Vocational Training, ten teams confronted specific problems encountered by young entrepreneurs such as difficulties accessing funding, lack of experience and monitoring, and isolation experienced when setting up a business. Various solutions were proposed to remedy these difficulties, geared towards the creation of remote training and advisory applications, the implementation of mentoring networks, coaching or exchange of experiences, distribution of community credit tools and ideas for games retracing the various stages of business creation and obstacles to be overcome.
At the end of the reflection process, the teams engaged were the subject of a vote by the audience and by a jury made up of institutional stakeholders and NGO members. Three winning teams were selected based on the pertinence of the solution proposed, impacts, consideration of positive/negative effects, innovative use of ICT* and clarity of presentation.
*ICT = Information and communication technologies
