Promoting Eco-Entrepreneurship in Africa

Sustainability entrepreneurship contributes to solving social and environmental problems, particularly in emerging and developing countries. Between 2015 and 2018, this project aimed at potentiating and accelerating a green and inclusive economy. Moreover, it was to establish an enabling environment for eco-entrepreneurship and sustainable consumption and production so as to provide a SWITCH Africa Green response to Africa’s goal of sustainable development.

The project was built upon four principal pillars, the SAG-SEED Starter, the SAG-SEED Catalyser, the SAG-SEED Replicator and SAG-SEED BDS+ which pursue distinct objectives:

1. The SAG-SEED Starter is to promote eco-entrepreneurship by building capacities of new eco-enterprises and support them through their initial founding phase. Furthermore, the aim is to foster the creation new eco-enterprises that are better equipped for their future development, which will help to reduce unemployment, especially by supporting youth entrepreneurs with innovative ideas and by allowing people who find it difficult to enter employment to make a living through self-employment.
2. The SAG-SEED Catalyser is to find the most promising, innovative and locally led eco-enterprises, showcase their contributions towards an inclusive and green economy, and support their future development.30 of the most promising and innovative existing eco-enterprises are honoured with an SAG-SEED Award and received the Catalyser Support Package including comprehensive and tailored capacity building based on the SEED Catalyser Toolbox. Part of this support comprises the participation in the SEED Africa Symposia in Nairobi, Kenya in 2016 and 2017, organised and implemented by adelphi.
3. The SAG-SEED Replicator is to promote the uptake and replication of eco-entrepreneurship to future eco-entrepreneur‘s by identifying the most promising eco-enterprise models for replication and making them replication-ready. Capacity building and familiarisation of future eco-entrepreneurs with best-practice models will enable them to replicate those that are most promising.
4. The SAG-SEED Business Development Services – BDS+ is to enhance the capacity of business development services (BBS) providers and especially to engage them on the triple bottom line (BDS+), so contributing to the building of a functional market for green and inclusive BDS and fostering on enabling environment for eco-enterprises.

In the framework of adelphi hosting SEED, adelphi implemented this multi-country project under the umbrella of the SWITCH-Africa Green (SAG) project. SAG was implemented by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) with the assistance of the European Union. Target countries of the project were the six SAG pilot countries: Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, South Africa, and Uganda. SEED is a global partnership for action on sustainable development and the green economy. It was founded by UNEP, UNDP and IUCN at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg – www.seed.uno.