ENRICH in Africa - A Multi-sided Platform Business Model for supporting the EU-African Innovation Community.

The European Commission is aiming to extend the network of the ENRICH centres in USA, Brazil and China to cover other regions, in order to connect European researchers and entrepreneurs globally.

The ENRICH in Africa (EiA) project is addressing this challenge by establishing the EiA Centre, targeting the sub-Saharan African region.

Focus of the activities will be the set-up of a network of incubators and accelerators to deliver services to European and African innovators.To best deliver this model, the EiA consortium brings together active innovation ecosystem actors from across the EU and Africa, who, together, have co-created a business model that offers them, as customers, what they need; a strong value proposition and beneficial services.

This foundation offers a strong revenue model that can ensure a legacy for the commitment provided by the European Commission through this grant.

Utilising this co-creation ethos EiA brings together incubators and accelerators across the EU and Africa to act as Champions for EiA.

The network, in the beginning comprising of EiA consortium members, will be expanded to other entrepreneurial support organisations that meet the EiA standards.

Key element of the concept is the focus on capacity building and learning for incubators and accelerators in order for them be able to offer high quality services to innovators.

The EiA multi-sided platform, with a clever digital backbone, will be the central point for all EiA activities, offering different services for a wide range of stakeholders in the EU-Africa innovation ecosystem.This project offers a testable framework, which will be piloted in the initial stage of the project timeframe, leading into an evaluation and subsequent centre implementation phase, which will see the roll out of the piloted project to its full commercial capacity, ensuring that the EiA Centre will be carried forward beyond the lifetime of the project.