UNDP Youth Entrepreneurship Portal

Transcription

1 UNDP Youth Entrepreneurship Portal Final Feasibility Report 3rd April 2017 Prepared by: 1

2 Contents Executive Summary Context... 4 What we mean by Youth Entrepreneurship Portal... 4 Methodology of feasibility assessment The Youth entrepreneurship ecosystem in Africa... 6 Africa s youth entrepreneurship opportunity... 6 Key ecosystem challenges Findings from UNDP s support ecosystem landscape mapping... 8 Supply-side analysis of 300 youth-focused ecosystem support providers... 8 Lens 1: Ecosystem gaps... 8 Lens 2: Geographic Maturity... 8 Lens 3: Type of support providers... 9 Lens 4: Stage of business Lens 5: Women-Entrepreneurship Lens 6: Online vs Offline medium of support Broken Linkages in the Youth Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Insights from SEED-UNDP Africa Symposium What youth entrepreneurs say White spaces in the virtual youth entrepreneurship ecosystem Information: From Online Directory to Navigator Networking: Catalysing local youth entrepreneurship communities Finance: Filling the idea and seed stage gap Mentoring: Setting up a structured online mentoring program Strategic considerations for portal design and development Key design criteria for the portal design First insights on revenue streams and sustainability Insights on resources, partners and portal content drivers Insights from donor-supported online solutions and portals Recommendations for positioning of youth entrepreneurship portal Portal play-zone Defining a Portal ambition Annex Annex 1: Portal Case Studies Annex 2: List of stakeholders consulted Annex 3: Selected Literature Annex 4: SEED Symposium Insights Annex 4: List of Attendees for SEED Symposium

3 Executive Summary Africa is the youngest continent with almost 200 million people in the age group of years. The recent decades have seen entrepreneurial activity heating up across Africa leading to increasing number of youth from this age bracket taking the entrepreneurship plunge and moving from being job seekers to job creators. These youth entrepreneurs are exhibiting increasing risk propensity and heightened responsiveness to emerging entrepreneurship opportunities. However, the journeys of these youth entrepreneurs are littered with a range of challenges which can be broadly classified under lack of access to information, networking, funding and mentoring. Responding to these ecosystem challenges, UNDP aspires to design and develop a Youth Entrepreneurship Portal to help young entrepreneurs grow their businesses by creating a virtual ecosystem. With this objective UNDP conducted a feasibility assessment based on rigorous secondary research and stakeholder interviews. The exercise mapped and analysed the African youth entrepreneurship support ecosystem landscape with an aim to identify gaps and opportunities that an online portal can aspire to address with respect to the four broad ecosystem challenges. The recently concluded SEED-UNDP Africa Symposium 2016 which brought together young entrepreneurs helped this feasibility study capture insights on the ecosystem challenges and potential solution spaces from the young entrepreneurs perspective. Based on the analysis, the team arrived at a set of key strategic considerations for portal design and development drawing from insights around key design criteria, portal revenue streams and sustainability, portal content drivers, and online entrepreneurship support initiatives by donors. The feasibility assessment clearly validates the need for UNDP to develop and launch an online portal for strengthening the existing youth entrepreneurship ecosystem in Africa. The assessment of gaps suggests that a whitespace exists for the UNDP portal to act as a youth entrepreneurship ecosystem catalyst. In this role, UNDP can act as a facilitator of capital, information, mentoring and networking, rather than providing these services directly. UNDP s strength as an ecosystem convener and its strong brand will bring an additionality to the existing ecosystem efforts, provided that the planned UNDP portal integrates existing efforts and helps driving traffic and gaining visibility for other initiatives. Stakeholder feedback suggests that UNDP can play a strong role as an aggregator, given its neutral positioning and role as a market builder in the entrepreneurship ecosystem. Stakeholders consulted during the exercise suggests that value would lie into helping to create the market for youth entrepreneurship promotion, whether it is through helping to build the pipeline of youth entrepreneurs and helping idea-stage entrepreneurs or through catalyzing the ecosystem to help youth entrepreneurs to build and scale their businesses. 3

4 1. Context What we mean by Youth Entrepreneurship Portal The UNDP Regional Service Centre for Africa's (RSCA) Inclusive Growth and Sustainable Development Cluster, through its Regional Private Sector Unit, aims to create a catalytic intervention to strengthen the youth entrepreneurship ecosystem in Africa. Building on the African Women and Youth Finance Directory created in 2013, UNDP aims to leverage existing online resources to create a continental online portal that caters to the needs of young entrepreneurs. The value proposition behind the Youth entrepreneurship portal is i) helping youth, especially women entrepreneurs to create and grow their business, ii) create a virtual ecosystem and iii) provide catalytic funding through a challenge (see Figure 1). Figure 1: Youth Entrepreneurship Portal Boundaries Help young entrepreneur create and grow their business: The UNDP youth portal aims to target young African entrepreneurs, especially women owned enterprises, at different business development stages and provide them with access to comprehensive information and support to be able to create and run successful enterprises. Virtual ecosystem: This online portal aims to provide support through four pillars that include access to Information, Financing, Mentoring and Networking. Information: The portal aims to provide information on the various aspects that include government funds, incentives, initiatives, schemes and partnerships initiated by different stakeholders in the system. UNDP will assess the most viable approach to provide young entrepreneurs with information and leveraging existing ecosystem efforts. Mentoring: The portal aims to pair young entrepreneurs with mentors that advise and guide them to establish, grow and manage their businesses as they expand. UNDP will assess the most feasible and viable model for mentorship. This will be based on the insights driven from the existing online mentorship platforms in the ecosystem. Financing: The portal aims to fund innovative ideas by young entrepreneurs through grants. UNDP will assess the model of an award/challenge as a modality to help young entrepreneurs access funding. Networking: The portal aims to provide a platform for young entrepreneurs to meet, exchange ideas, build partnerships, and facilitate cross-border collaboration. UNDP will assess the best mechanism of how an online portal can help achieve that. 4

5 Create opportunity for collaboration & one-stop solution: The portal aims to position itself as a collaboration platform, adding value to the ecosystem as a whole, instead of competing with existing efforts. The current mapping of existing online resources for young entrepreneurs in Africa indicates that while some portals exist providing some of the service offerings planned for the UNDP portal, there is no dedicated one stop solution for young entrepreneurs across Africa. Provide funding through a Challenge/Award: Grants to young entrepreneurs will be provided through a challenge, targeting young African entrepreneurs, at different stages. The challenge will be launched along with the portal. The award will consider various success criteria of an enterprise focused around scalability, sustainability, social and environmental impact and others. Eligibility if the award is years, whereas African women entrepreneurs will be given priority. This feasibility report will provide insights from a youth entrepreneurship ecosystem mapping and the assessment of existing gaps in the support landscape as well as present key design criteria for the portal. Methodology of feasibility assessment In order to conduct a feasibility assessment for the youth, especially women entrepreneurship portal, UNDP adopted an approach that combined secondary and primary research. Rigorous secondary research aimed at developing a deep understanding of the entrepreneurship support landscape in Africa with particular emphasis on challenges and needs of youth and women entrepreneurs. The secondary research included a mapping of the existing support ecosystem and developing a database of 300 organizations and initiatives, providing entrepreneurship support to young entrepreneurs across Africa across the pillars information, mentorship, financing and networking. The team analysed the database to identify gaps in ecosystem support applying a range of lenses including types of support, stages of support, geography of support and gender focus (Figure 2). Support ecosystem stakeholders were then shortlisted based on parameters like reach, number of challenges addressed, innovative service delivery model, and gender focus, for conducting detailed interviews and profiling interventions (see Annex). The stakeholder interviews focused on validating the analysis of gaps, identifying a set of strategic considerations for portal design and identifying possible avenues for collaboration. In order to conduct a needs assessment, UNDP conducted a Design Hack YOU4YOUTH at the SEED Symposium to understand and assessment users perspective and seek feedback from young entrepreneurs on the potential portal. Figure 1:Feasibility Report Methodology 5

6 2. The Youth entrepreneurship ecosystem in Africa Africa s youth entrepreneurship opportunity Africa is the youngest continent with almost 200 million people in the age group of years 1, constituting 60% of the continent s total population and 45% of the total labor force. With a labour market that does not provide a lot of opportunities for wage employment, youth accounts for 60% of total unemployed population in Africa. 2 As an alternative to wage employment, an increasing number of Africa s youth is therefore exploring entrepreneurship. With economic growth and an improving business environment, opportunities for entrepreneurship and innovation are growing: According to IMF projection, Africa will exhibit an economic growth of 5.3% in 2017, making Africa one of the fastest growing regions worldwide. New opportunities have spurred entrepreneurial activity across Africa, leading to the highest rate of youth starting up new businesses, and moving from job seeking to job creating. 3 Africa s youth has higher risk-appetite and is more responsive to new opportunities & trends. According to Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, Sub-Saharan Africa with 29% has the highest percentage of young people involved in nascent and new businesses 4. For 75% of youth starting a business is a good career option. About 60% of youth believe they have capabilities to start a business 5. A recent survey conducted by Anzisha Prize shows that 79% of youth entrepreneurs are very positive about their outlook of their venture. At the same time, the motivations to start up are driven by the intent to create impact in their societies: An overwhelming 57% of youth entrepreneurs want to make a difference in the world. Only about 15% are taking advantage of an opportunity to grow their business; while only 1% starts entrepreneurship to become wealthy 6. In this research and for the purpose of the planned youth entrepreneurship portal, UNDP therefore refers to youth entrepreneurs as opportunity-driven enterprises and enterprises in the Schumpeter understanding of entrepreneurs as those businesses that aim to create a disruption and develop a new solution or innovation for a particular context. Necessity-driven micro entrepreneurs who mainly are into business due to a survival motivation are not the focus of this research and also not the planned portal. We believe necessity-driven micro enterprises led by youth need a different set of interventions that cannot be addressed by a youth online portal. These are hence not the focus of this report. Challenges preventing youth entrepreneurship to reach full potential Although young African entrepreneurs are willing and aspire to set up successful enterprises, not many of them succeed in growing their business and most of them face challenges in the early stages. Our secondary and primary research suggests that challenges faced by the young entrepreneurs can be broadly classified into four pillars - Funding, Information, Mentoring and Networking. Figure 2: Youth entrepreneurship challenges 1 Promoting Youth Employment in Africa. African Economic Outlook (link) 2 How to support youth entrepreneurship in Africa. GE Reports (link) 3 Catalyst for Change. Intellecap (link) Generation Entrepreneur? The state of global youth entrepreneurship (link) 6 Anzisha Youth Entrepreneurship Survey 2016 (link) 6

7 Key ecosystem challenges Funding: According to the International Finance Corporation (IFC), about 84% of small and mediumsized enterprises (SMEs) in Africa are either un-served or underserved, depicting a value gap in credit financing of USD billion 7. The main sources of capital for SMEs include retained earnings, credit cards, loan associations and investments from family and friends. It appears that the cost of funding is the primary reason why entrepreneurs are reluctant to approach different sources of capital. Entrepreneurs believe that cost of debt and equity capital hinders growth of the enterprise. Other financial institutions like banks require collateral against the borrowed capital because of which, by default they do not qualify for funding 8. Government bureaucracy and nepotism make government funding less accessible. For young entrepreneurs, the challenges are even more severe. In addition to the above, young entrepreneurs lack the track records and business history that provides traditional funders with confidence. Limited ability to articulate business and funding requirements as well as limited awareness of existing alternative funding options, force entrepreneurs to rely on their personal networks to access finance 9. About 59% of young entrepreneurs therefore, use friends and family as top sources of funding. For 32% of youth, the main reason for not accessing funding was limited knowledge on how to source funding. Overall, for about 48% of young entrepreneurs surveyed by the Anzisha Prize 10, funding is the major obstacle to growth. Information: Training programs are one of the main sources for young entrepreneurs for receiving information: 54% of youth entrepreneurs have received business information through trainings. However, a research on the youth ecosystem documents that most training programs remain standalone events with limited long-term impact on the enterprises. In addition, information providing platforms act as the source for self-learning to young entrepreneurs: 54% of young entrepreneurs surveyed access support from online resources. Access to information is not only important to early stage businesses but at all the stages of business development. Entrepreneurs in the initial phases of the business require different kind of information (e.g. information in legal and regulatory aspects around starting a business). The ones in the process of raising capital need information on market potential and business environment. Overall, our research suggests that young entrepreneurs without access to information and adequate expertise face difficulties presenting themselves for funding and hence miss out on opportunities. Mentoring: Mentoring support by experienced entrepreneurs and industry experts is one of the most valuable services for young entrepreneurs. Mentors provide services related to technical skills, such as written and oral communication; technical management and organising skills; business management skills. About 62% of youth entrepreneurs interviewed by Anzisha Prize receive support from mentors, 23% received support by incubators and 15% had a business coach. However, rural and remote areas lack high quality mentors and particularly those who can provide face-to-face support. A third of the youth in Sub-Saharan Africa therefore, have no one influencing their decision to start a business. In such cases, online models, training local communities, and peer to peer monitoring may be explored. Networking: Young entrepreneurs face difficulties accessing networking opportunities with other peers, professional entrepreneurs or advisers, and potential business partners or suppliers. This is often not only because of their locations, but also because many networks have a bias towards more mature entrepreneurs. A survey conducted by Anzisha Prize shows that 64% of youth entrepreneurs receive support from networking events. Our research suggests that most of the entrepreneurs rely on family and friends as a primary source of guidance. The concern associated with this as compared to assistance from private players and government organizations is that it could hamper technological Policy Guide on Youth Entrepreneurship (link) 9 Accelerating Entrepreneurship in Africa (link) 10 Anzisha Youth Entrepreneurship Survey 2016 (link) 7

8 development, innovation, diversification of business into different sectors or expansion to other markets. According to the Anizha prize survey only 14% of youth entrepreneurs do business internationally, implying untapped opportunities. Overall, it appears that there is a gap for youthfocused networking events. 3. Findings from UNDP s support ecosystem landscape mapping Supply-side analysis of 300 youth-focused ecosystem support providers In order to get a more granular understanding of the youth entrepreneurship support landscape across Africa, we conducted a mapping of stakeholders that focus explicitly on youth entrepreneurship or have a majority of their customers in the youth entrepreneurship segment. This section presents key findings of this analysis backed with insights from primary interviews. Figure 3: Ecosystem Gaps Lens 1: Ecosystem gaps Networking and Funding exhibit the major gaps in the youth entrepreneurship Figure 4: Geographic Ecosystem Maturity ecosystem. Most support providers help youth entrepreneurs with information services (62%) and mentoring (65%). This includes business advisory services. Prominent players providing information to young entrepreneurs include the YE Community of Youth and Child Finance International, a portal that provides country-level information on youth entrepreneurship activities. Only 44% of support providers offer networking services. One of the most known initiatives is the Young African Leadership Initiative, providing networking to young leaders, including entrepreneurs across the continent. The other players that provide networking support include global networks with footprint in Africa such as Young Business International (YBI), Global Entrepreneurship Network Africa, Ashoka, or Global Youth Innovation Network; Pan-African initiatives such as the Entrepreneurship Initiative for African Youth or country-specific initiatives such as the Ghana Association of Women Entrepreneurs,, among others. About 31% of support providers offer funding support. Dedicated funding platforms that help young entrepreneurs especially in early stages of funding include VC4Africa, a Pan-African portal helping young entrepreneurs with early stage funding. The other players filling up the financing gap include impact investors such as Acumen Fund, Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund, Grassroot Business Fund Bamboo Finance, DOB Equity, ICCO, and investment networks such as BiD Network, Intellecap Impact Investing Network or Victoria Solutions. We present a deeper analysis on the gaps and white spaces in the next section. Lens 2: Geographic Maturity The youth entrepreneurship support ecosystem is most evolved in East Africa, reflecting the state of the entrepreneurial ecosystem as a whole. East Africa is the most favorable region in terms of entrepreneurial activity across the continent, and hence the major hub for youth entrepreneurship activities. Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ethiopia and Uganda are the major hubs of entrepreneurial activity in East Africa. On the other hand, weak business climate and fragile contexts 8

9 as well as low internet penetration and language barriers are major factors that hinder the evolution of ecosystems in Central Africa and West Africa. Within West Africa, Ghana and Nigeria are the entrepreneurial hubs. Apart from South Africa, we found that ecosystems are weaker in countries such as Zambia, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Angola. Many platforms, however, cater to the continent like African Youth Entrepreneurship (A.Y.E), African Women's Entrepreneurship Program, Ashoka Africa, Landmark Development Initiative (LDI) Africa to name a few and act as Pan-African support providers. Lens 3: Type of support providers Figure 5: Type of Stakeholder The landscape of support providers is diverse, with a majority of players providing non-financial support to young entrepreneurs. Incubators and accelerators are the key ecosystem support providers for young entrepreneurs, comprising 33% of the stakeholders. Incubators, accelerators and co-working spaces are the main providers of support for young entrepreneurs, followed by networks and platforms. Incubators and accelerators are mainly local stakeholders that support young entrepreneurs by providing infrastructure and access to internet and other facilities, introductions to mentors and business service providers, and connections to peer- to-peer networks. Prominent examples of co-working spaces that bring together a large number of young entrepreneurs include Impact Hub Network focused on high impact entrepreneurs and the tech startup communities associated with Afrilabs. Other examples include tech hubs such as Nairobi Garage and ihub in Nairobi, klab and THINK in Rwanda, iceaddis in Ethiopia, Hive Colab in Uganda and others under the umbrella of Afrilabs, thematic accelerator programs such as Africatwenty10, Ampion Start-up Bus, Edupreneurs or SPRING Accelerator, incubators such as GrowthAfrica that serve either 2-3 countries or are pan Africa level as well as thematic initiatives such as Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator. Networks and platforms are the second largest group with 24% organizing events, competitions, and conferences that focus on different aspects of entrepreneurship ecosystem. The Anzisha Prize and fellowship supported by MasterCard Foundation is one example of a prominent award for youth entrepreneurs across the continent. Other examples include Demo Africa or Sankalp Forum, celebrating young entrepreneurs and providing networking opportunities to young entrepreneurs at Pan-Africa level. They help by conducting networking sessions, awards and workshops. Some of them run business plan competitions that grant seed finance to young entrepreneurs. While some are global networks such as Young Entrepreneurs Network (YEN), Youth Action Net, others are country focused such as Ghana's Next Young Entrepreneur (GNYE) or South Africa based Africa's Young Entrepreneurs or regional such as, Africa Innovation Prize or the Youth, Arts, Development & Entrepreneurship Network. The third largest stakeholder group with 15% share include investors, many of them impact investors interested in young entrepreneurs and innovative business models. While some impact investors provide seed-funding as well, most of these institutions support revenue and growth stage enterprises. Initiatives like Child and Youth Finance International aim to provide seed-funding to young entrepreneurs. However, there is a large gap in the early stage financing space. Some of the players at pan Africa level include foundations such as the Tony Elumelu Foundation, Mulago Foundation or Lundin Foundation that provides seed and risk capital is to high potential enterprises. 9

10 There are other impact funds such as AlphaMundi, Mango Fund, Grassroot Business Fund, that provide debt and equity financing to scalable early stage social ventures among many others. Academia plays a rather smaller role in the youth entrepreneurship space with 7% and generally has a role at Idea Stage, helping youth developing business ideas and providing early mentorship support. Academic players like Kenyatta University, Bertha Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship, University of Nairobi, E4impact, Enterprise Development Centre, and University College of Entrepreneurship are some examples of the players involved in supporting the youth entrepreneurship ecosystem. These players are mainly involved in providing professional education and running social entrepreneurship programs across Africa with the aim that these enterprises will further support in job creation and increase employment in Africa. They provide learning program; opportunity for evidenced-based research and policy for Africa; training impact entrepreneurs in Sub-Saharan Africa; and organize events in form of seminars, boot camps, workshops, etc. They are also involved in training small scale businesses and help them in capacity building. While the interest of academic institutions in entrepreneurship promotion is high, the capabilities are rather low professors and faculty themselves lack capacities in entrepreneurial skills and only few universities or colleges have the internal capabilities. With more business schools opening up and the scenario may change in the future. However, the academic sector may be involved in the portal as distribution and marketing partners, making youth aware of the portal. A number of government initiatives have come up in recent years not only drafting youth entrepreneurship focused policies but also setting up funds and other support mechanisms for youth entrepreneurs. Governments of South Africa, Nigeria, and Ghana are examples of active governments that provide support services like funding and building entrepreneur development centres. Some of the innovative government initiatives include the YouthConnekt Program of the government of Rwanda, connecting youth role models, opportunities and skill building;the Ghana Center for and Innovations (GCEEI), a one stop solution for Ghanaian youth entrepreneurs or the Youth Enterprise Support Initiative (YES) a seed fund by the Government of Ghana; the Youth Enterprise Development Fund and the Uwezo Fund by the Kenyan Government, or the that seeks to create employment opportunities for young people through entrepreneurship. Very few service providers position themselves as youth-focused. Among service providers, e.g. talent, accounting, HR, legal advice, etc. young entrepreneurs access support services available to the larger ecosystem. Intellecap s StartupWave aims to bring transparency into this space by listing high quality service providers on the platform. There are very few actors that aggregate news to help entrepreneurs in access to information. Opportunities for Africans are an online portal that aggregates all types of opportunities for African youth. Lens 4: Stage of business Responding to the demand of early stage support, 43% of youth entrepreneurship ecosystem players focus on idea-stage support. However, the mapping exercise shows that access to seed funding is still a major gap with only 16% of idea stage providers helping with funding support. Most idea-stage support providers offer mentoring and information. Apart from incubators and accelerators, examples of mentoring providers include Mara Mentor, VC4Africa, YE Community or StartupWave. The other ecosystem players in the mentoring space HUB, Afrilab, Africatwenty10, GrowthAfrica, and SPRING. 10

11 Figure 6: Ecosystem gap in Idea-Stage Lens 5: Women-Entrepreneurship For women entrepreneurs, challenges are similar to those other entrepreneurs face but tailored offerings are limited. Only 8% of mapped support providers specifically focus on women. Within that group, 84% of service providers offer information and 74% mentoring, whereas access to funding is again the top challenge with only 21% focusing on finance. Our research, however, shows that the challenges faced by women entrepreneurs are not very different than others, which is why support providers do not make a distinction between women and other entrepreneurs. Lens 6: Online vs Offline medium of support Figure 7: Gender-focus With only 13% of support providers offering online support, this indicates a gap in the ecosystem. Within online providers, 74% provide information and 68% provide mentoring services. Funding lags behind with only 21% of providers offering access to finance through online channels. 11

12 Figure 8: Online Support in Comparison Information via online portals: Information is the widely served pillar in the online mode due to its easy accessibility and dissemination features. It includes information dissemination through learning models, webinars, general updates for young entrepreneurs. Most online portals focus on providing information to young entrepreneurs, e.g. either in terms of directories that help to find the right support programs and opportunities or though specific enterprise related information such as tools, checklists, and templates. VC4Africa, for example, provides support programs to list their activities on the platform, making it easy for youth entrepreneurs to discover programs. Entrepreneur magazine delivers relevant, incisive, quality content that inspires entrepreneurs to achieve their own business success; Youth Village South Africa focuses on facilitating access to development information across South Africa with focus on youth. Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator has also created a dedicated SME online platform to assist SMEs in registering, contracting and logging their talent requirements in an easy and cost effective manner. The Practitioner Hub propagates inclusive business models that combine commercial and social returns. The Hub provides practical information plus insights and good practices for practitioners and facilitators of inclusive business. Access to funding via online portals: Financial decision making traditionally has been an offline activity. Investors and bankers make financial decisions based on the team and track record and only recently financial decision-making has been brought into the virtual world. However, in the youth entrepreneurship ecosystem, few players exist that connect enterprises to investors. Most of the service providers such as VC4Africa or IB Accelerator offer investor discovery and initial introductions of investors and potential investee, with the funding process thereafter, being taken offline. Artha Platform is a portal aiming to connect enterprises to investors globally, many of them falling under the category of youth entrepreneurs. Kiva International non-profit organization is another example that connects people through online lending. Crowdfunding platforms such as Lelapa Fund or Jumpstart, Thundafund in South Africa, Slizbiz in Ghana, StartCrunch in Nigeria or Fund Find in South Africa are new players filling the funding gap. Networking via online portals: Many organizations leverage social media channels to build communities and networks. Many times, these networks have an offline component as well and bring the physical network into the virtual world. Virtual networking services in include discussions social media platforms such as Facebook or Linkedin or through own community features that help sharing and pitching ideas and exchanging experiences related to building and growing enterprises. Examples include the YALI Network, the Facebook group initiated by the Young African Leadership Initiative or YE Community, which are both regional in nature. Womenenterprise focused networks such as WeConnect provide a community for women entrepreneurs. Examples of county specific online portals include Youth Village in South Africa or Youth Innovation Hub in Nigeria. Mentoring via online portals: Online mentoring is still a newer concept and only few players such as Mara Mentor, VC4Africa or YE Community are involved in it. The most important advantage of online model is that it is cost effective and provides access to mentors that are 12

13 located globally via an online platform. However, most of the players are still figuring out the best possible mentoring model as the requirement for in-person mentoring is difficult to do away with completely. As the mapping has demonstrated, an increasing number of efforts are going into creating a virtual ecosystem for young entrepreneurs. Instead of duplicating efforts, UNDP will play a role in channelizing more traffic to existing solutions and hence catalyzing the ecosystem. Broken Linkages in the Youth Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Apart from the insufficient support provided in each of the broad pillars information, financing, mentoring, and networking, our research showed that the overall youth entrepreneurship ecosystem is broken. In places where conferences and business plan competitions and other information activities for youth entrepreneurs exist, these initiatives often remain stand-alone, with little followup. At the same time, those enterprises could be a potential pipeline for incubators and accelerators. Incubators and accelerators, on the other hand, are mostly focused in capital cities and with little reach beyond metro cities. They often only take 5% of applicants into their program and do not have a process to keep involved with rejected enterprises leading to a missed opportunity to help those ideas to grow into the next generation of entrepreneurs. Investors, on the other hand, rarely engage with youth entrepreneurs. Information asymmetry prevents young entrepreneurs to find the right financial or non-financial support. Virtual solutions have started to fill the gap and create a virtual ecosystem. The next section will provide insights into where white spaces exist in the virtual ecosystem. Figure 9: Broken Youth Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Insights from SEED-UNDP Africa Symposium What youth entrepreneurs say The SEED-UNDP Africa Symposium conducted on 29 th September 2016 in Kenya brought together about 30 youth entrepreneurs for an interactive session to deliberate on critical ecosystem challenges they face across the four pillars of access to information, finance, mentoring and networking and come up with online solution ideas that can be replicated pan Africa. The symposium divided the young entrepreneurs, running businesses across different sectors, into groups which worked on rapid idea generation which were presented and voted upon. The groups were then asked to further develop the shortlisted ideas. Another round of presentations followed to select four best ideas. In addition to facilitating the interactive idea generation process, the responses from the youth entrepreneurs also threw up interesting insights around the four key ecosystem challenges. 13

14 Winning ideas for addressing youth entrepreneurship ecosystem challenges Amongst the many ideas that were generated during the symposium, four ideas were voted at the best though it remained to be seen how replicable these ideas could be across Africa. The winning ideas are briefly described below: One Stop Shop for Entrepreneurs: The winning idea was that the youth portal should act as an aggregator of all existing resources around opportunities, information, mentors, and applications for funding. Mobile Funding Platform for SME: Since funding is one of the major challenges for early stage enterprises, the idea was to have a mobile fundraising platform that enables members to contribute to the fund using mobile money and subsequent withdrawal from the fund at a moderate interest rate when a member needs it. Match Making Platform: The portal can act as a marketplace for investors and enterprises. It can facilitate pitching of feasible ideas, and signing of a non-discloser agreement for the funding. The portal can be sustainable by charging subscription fees to investor to get access to a database of entrepreneurs and potential deal flows. Entrepreneurs sign up will be free. Online Incubation Support: Offline incubation support has failed to reach larger audience residing in tier 2 and 3 cities. The online model of incubation support can help in bringing incubation support services to entrepreneurs outside main cities. Some of the other interesting ideas that were presented by entrepreneurs included leveraging local network of funders, for example, Chamas that exist in Kenya through mobile money platform; digitizing conventional Chamas and Harambees; entrepreneurs acting as investors to support themselves; using mobile money entrepreneurs can contribute funds funds to a pay bill number then re-allocate to entrepreneurs when they need money, as a revolving fund; de-centralizes access to incubators outside major cities, where incubators travel up country to provide services to rural entrepreneurs Insights from youth entrepreneurs needs for addressing the four nodal ecosystem challenges The Symposium generated a number of interesting insights around the needs of African youth entrepreneurs in response to the four core ecosystem challenges. These insights are highlighted as follows: Entrepreneurs know that ecosystem support solutions for the four key challenges exist but awareness about how to access and use them is poor Information needs for very early stage entrepreneurs begin at a very basic level, evident from the basic questions that raised around mentoring, networking and funding Needs have an order of criticality with finance topping the ranking followed by mentoring and networking but access to information is the most fundamental requirement that cuts across all of these needs Quality and convenience of access are paramount needs with respect to information access Beyond providing information, there is a need to advice early stage entrepreneurs on how to apply the information A cultural dimension exists with respect to investing with local investors mostly tending to invest in friend and family and in sectors they are aware of Entrepreneurs exhibited a strong need and inclination towards find ways of helping themselves as far as ecosystem support is concerned which implies that they want to serve as ecosystem support providers from themselves 4. White spaces in the virtual youth entrepreneurship ecosystem Information: From Online Directory to Navigator The nature of the challenge 14

15 Our research and stakeholder consultations highlighted that the problem is not a lack of information per se, but rather making information accessible to youth entrepreneurs in a structured and curated manner. Many attempts have been made to create directories and depositaries of information, however, often keeping the end-user out of the picture. As a result, many online portals are presented in a clumsy fashion, outdated quickly, highly sporadic or unstructured. At the same time, there is a lack of awareness among young entrepreneurs about the available information resources and where to find them. There is hence a need for a navigator or one stop aggregator that sign-posts opportunities for young entrepreneurs. These demand side constraints therefore, point towards the need to leverage, organize and deliver existing information to youth entrepreneurs in a user-friendly manner and using channels that youth uses frequently. From a supply-side perspective, however, stakeholders running successful online portals emphasized the resource intensity that is required to create an online portal. Successful online solutions require the creation of stickiness and constant content up-dating, and therefore running a portal requires human and financial resources. In an ecosystem that is changing every day, information loses relevance quickly. At the same time, demand for information is very much localized and requires contextual contributions. Existing solutions and players At the SEED-UNDP Africa Symposium, responses from youth entrepreneurs strongly validated the need for an online portal that serves as a one stop aggregator of existing information and helps them navigate through the information in a seamless and user friendly manner. Few players have succeeded in creating successful information services. While in the physical world, incubators, communities and entrepreneurship centers are addressing the need, a few solutions exist that would be open for collaboration with the planned youth entrepreneurship portal: YE Community of Child and Youth Finance International has created Country Guides that are developed leveraging physical content partners. Country Guides provide information around business support providers, support programs, mentoring opportunities and access to capital. While the portal has global reach, most users are from Africa. Practitioner s Hub has recently launched Search IB, a searchable database that allows searching for support organizations in the inclusive business space. Users can search according to type of organization (e.g. investor, service provider, government, donor, etc.). A youth- or womenentrepreneurship focused search can be added to the search function. VC4Africa aims to position itself as a market place in the early stage entrepreneurship ecosystem Pan-Africa and recently launched the feature of allowing organizations and programs to list themselves on the platform. As of now 250 organizations have listed themselves and have micro sites, which make it easy for enterprises to find the opportunities. Enterprises can apply directly on the platform for the opportunities, making it easy in a time of application fatigue. StartupWave has a business service provider database that on-boards high quality service providers on the platform. The portal handpicks service providers and hence ensures quality to portal users. Instead of mass, the value proposition of StartupWave s database is curation and quality. 15

16 SPRING Accelerator can act as the test users of the platform and also act as content partners to provide gender specific content. Figure 10: Existing Information Providers White Spaces and opportunities for UNDP The analysis of the mapping exercise and stakeholder consultations suggests two white spaces for UNDP: Navigator portal UNDP can design and develop a portal that helps young enterprises find the appropriate support and navigates the way to selected high quality service providers. The navigator portal would act as one stop solution enabling youth entrepreneurs navigate seamlessly sift through and find relevant information. The focus would be on quality rather than quantity of support providers. Aggregator or Gateway portal UNDP can design and develop a portal that aggregates existing information on other online portals without creating new content. The idea is for the portal to serve as Gateway of Gateways to leverage existing online resources and countryspecific information in a bid to plug the gap in terms of organized access to localized and contextual information. Networking: Catalysing local youth entrepreneurship communities Nature of the challenge Our research and stakeholder consultations suggest that there is a shortage of networking and community events for young entrepreneurs. As a result there is a dearth of networking events, specifically focusing on youth entrepreneurs and a lack of activities to build local youth entrepreneurship communities. Stakeholder feedback suggests that there is a lack of funding for ecosystem building activities and the need for a community treasure box that enables the seeding of youth entrepreneurship ecosystems. While virtual community building fills part of the gap and can be done with limited financial resources, physical and face-to-face community building is needed to complement any virtual efforts and to build the required trust and comfort-level. Overall, the youth entrepreneurship ecosystem in Africa is nascent and while there are many one-off events and interventions, there is no effort towards building entrepreneurial communities. While attempts are being made to strengthen young leaders and entrepreneurs, little support is provided in alumni, community and network building. 16

17 Existing solutions and players Few players are attempting to create youth entrepreneurship communities and use online channels to mobilize and activate. While offline communities exist around co-working spaces such as the communities under the umbrella of Impact Hub or Afrilabs or around specific fellowships like Ashoka Fellows or World Economic Forum Global Shapers, a few online solutions exist that would be open for collaboration with the planned youth entrepreneurship portal: YE Community: Child and Youth Finance International has created a community feature on the portal that allows youth to communicate with each other. A dedicated Facebook page supports community building. YALI: YALI has created regional leadership centers across Africa that conducts local events and builds an off-line community of young leaders and entrepreneurs. Complementing the offline efforts YALI has an online community that could be leveraged as a channel for the purpose of the UNDP portal. YALI has also built a community of more than 3000 alumni, where many are young entrepreneurs, and engages them in alumni activities. Figure 11: Existing solutions networking White Spaces and opportunities for UNDP The analysis of the mapping exercise and stakeholder consultations suggests two white spaces for UNDP: Building a Pan-Africa online network of youth entrepreneurship communities UNDP can seed an online network of youth entrepreneurship communities who connect with each other virtually and exchange on the how of building dynamic entrepreneurial communities. Catalysing local ecosystem & network building UNDP can use the portal to seed local ecosystem and network building activities by partnering with local organizations and catalysing activities through small grants provided through the challenge mechanism. 17

18 Finance: Filling the idea and seed stage gap Nature of the challenge Research and stakeholder feedback suggests that young entrepreneurs lack access to seed stage finance. Apart from the already mentioned track record, youth entrepreneurs find it difficult to speak the investor language and to present their business proposition to attract and sustain investor interest. A gap hence exists to provide young entrepreneurs with seed funding, at the same time preparing them through structured and milestone-based mentoring for an eventual capital raise and helping to identify capital requirements and preparing financial documentation. Existing solutions and players While seed funds and select impact investors provide early stage funding for young entrepreneurs, some governments have dedicated funds and schemes, and a few online solution providers have emerged in the space to help enterprises discover investors or prepare for investment. All would be interested to partner with the planned portal: YE Community: The platform organizes pitch days to facilitate investment for young entrepreneurs. Awards are the most successful instrument of the platform, attracting entrepreneurs and providing them with a recognition that helps them in their capital raise. VC4Afica: The platform has a venture database and allows enterprises to create profiles that are visible to investors. At the same time, the platform provides a mentorship that helps enterprises get feedback from investors. StartupWave: The platform helps idea-stage enterprises through virtual pre-incubation and incubation to prepare for capital raise. Modularised content helps enterprises to understand what investors look for and how to articulate the business idea to investors. At the end of the process, StartupWave organizes a demo day for investors and other partners. Figure 12: Existing solutions that provide finance Key gaps and opportunity spaces for an online portal The two opportunity spaces for an online portal with respect to access to finance that emerge from analysis based on our mapping exercise and stakeholder consultations are: Online mechanism for delivering idea stage funding UNDP can develop an online mechanism on a portal to channelize idea/seed stage funding to young entrepreneurs to drive aspiration and trigger entrepreneurialism. The portal can provide young entrepreneurs with 18

19 seed-funding through a challenge mechanism. In addition to the grant funding, young entrepreneurs would receive structured milestone based mentoring support that helps them in their capital raise from banks or investors. Catalytic funding for ecosystems UNDP can create a mechanism to unlock further resources and catalyse the youth entrepreneurship ecosystem rather than financing individual entrepreneurs. Using this approach, UNDP could create a greater catalytic impact by reaching out to a larger number of youth entrepreneurs and financing local ecosystem building activities such as business plan competitions, structured mentoring programs and other community building events. The challenge could also be to provide seed funding to institutions to organize ecosystem building activities. Responses from youth entrepreneurs on their needs at the SEED-UNDP Africa Symposium, validated the importance of catalyzing local ecosystem building activities as this will create a multiplier effect on spurring and supporting youth entrepreneurship across Africa Mentoring: Setting up a structured online mentoring program Nature of the challenge Our research and stakeholder consultations indicate that online mentoring is challenging. On the demand side, there is a lack of awareness about available mentorship opportunities, but at the same time a lack of commitment and seriousness on the side of the entrepreneur. This is often caused by a lack of awareness on what is meaningful mentoring and how to articulate an appropriate mentoring request. Stakeholders mentioned that when given the choice between different support services, mentoring ranks lowest. On the supply side, mentoring is mostly offered as a matchmaking service and without monitoring beyond the initial introduction. Very few players provide structured and milestone-based mentoring. As a result, many online mentoring platforms struggle to demonstrate impacts as a stand-alone service. In addition, mentoring is preferred in a face-to-face manner and virtual platforms have difficulties building the trust that is needed. Other supply side challenges include the on-boarding of high quality mentors: VC4Africa as one of the most successful platforms has an asymmetry and more demand for mentorship than supply. Engaging and incentivizing mentors over a longer period of time is seen as a key challenge. Overall, it has shown to be difficult to track outcomes of online mentoring. Youth entrepreneurs at the SEED-UNDP Africa Symposium, flagged the importance of the personal touch that face to face mentoring provides. Recognizing this, many of the entrepreneurs have tried to apply to incubators but have been rejected. Existing solutions and players While offline communities and co-working spaces often offer mentoring opportunities, a few platforms are offering online-mentoring: Mara Mentor: Mara Mentor is positioned as Pan-African mentoring application. Enterprises and mentors can find each other on the platform. However, milestones are not monitored and the mentoring is unstructured YE Community: The platform allows mentors to register themselves. Enterprises can connect to mentors and articulate mentor requests. However, the program has not taken off. VC4Africa: The platform has a mentor market place in which enterprises can find mentors. The platform is a market place but VC4Africa is not involved in monitoring the interaction. To provide enterprises with a more scalable way of online support, VC4Africa will be launching an Academy shortly. 19

20 IBA: The Inclusive Business Accelerator is a white-labelled version of VC4Africa and provides inclusive businesses with mentors. The platform is pivoting now to link enterprises with business development service providers, which are accredited by IBA. StartupWave: The platform is the only virtual platform that provides a structured mentoring process, where enterprises need to meet milestones and undergo a virtual journey. The program is divided into pre-incubation and incubation: While the pre-incubation program uses the business model canvas and modules around it for mentoring, the incubation phase defines individual milestones for the entrepreneurs. Figure 13: Existing providers of mentoring support Key gaps and opportunity spaces for an online portal The two opportunity spaces for an online portal with respect to access to mentoring that emerge from analysis based on our mapping exercise and stakeholder consultations are: Structured milestone based online mentorship support UNDP can create a structured and milestone based online mentorship program. This program can be related to the enterprise challenge, e.g. focusing on specific sectors or themes (e.g. agri entrepreneurs, fintech entrepreneurs, women entrepreneurs, etc.). Depending on the design of the program, a demo day could be organized at the end of the mentoring program. Aggregator of physical mentorship providers UNDP can create a portal to position itself as an aggregator that links to existing physical mentorship programs run by incubators, accelerators, work spaces and universities. Mentoring programs could list on the portal to make it easier for enterprises to discover them. The mentorship gateway portal can then facilitate in-person mentorship support for African youth entrepreneurs by connecting them with these physical mentorship providers. 20

21 5. Strategic considerations for portal design and development Key design criteria for the portal design Primary interviews with the stakeholders that run online portals as well as with user-groups revealed a valuable set of insights around design considerations that need to be borne in mind while developing an online portal. The key design considerations are as follows: 1. Have a clear value proposition: Stakeholders clearly emphasized how critical it is for an online portal to have a very clearly articulated value proposition. The value proposition should be directed to a well-defined target audience and should drive the design of the portal s core offerings. All features that the portal builds should be clearly in sync with the value proposition. It is important not to lose focus by trying too many things for too many different types of audiences. At the same time, existing portals emphasized to be ready for adjusting the service offerings with the changing customer needs. 2. Create a minimal viable product: Stakeholders have advised to start lean by creating a minimal viable product (MVP) and not aiming to create all features at once. The MVP should be first validated through a pilot with a limited target group. The validation will provide vital inputs that inform the further design of a comprehensive solution. Additional features can be added once the MVP has been validated and early adopters have been on-boarded on the portal. This is specifically important when testing potential revenue streams as well. Before launching multiple services, it is important to test the viability of once core service. 3. Market gap does not automatically indicate demand: Stakeholders cautioned us that the mere existence of a market gap does not guarantee existence of demand. It is therefore important to develop the portal only when the demand from the target group is explicitly visible or articulated. The fact that we do not see a one stop shop for early-stage youth entrepreneurs can also indicate that it is very difficult to create a business model in this gap and this is the reason why not a lot of players attempt to address this gap. Given that the market discovery process takes time, it is important to factor in the possible need for multiple pivots during the first year pilot. Business Fights Poverty, for example, pivots at least once a year to keep the portal responsive to changing demands. 4. Leverage existing online infrastructure: Stakeholders strongly recommended leveraging existing online infrastructure to bring cost savings. To illustrate, IB Accelerator is a whitelabelled version of VC4Africa, built on top of the existing technical backend. Similarly, Business Fights Poverty has white-labelled multiple portals for third parties, offering costsavings to those portals. Apart from the backend technology, leveraging existing online portals and other online resources wherever possible is advisable for providing services such as information, networking, finance and mentorship. 5. Define whether content or channel is the core value proposition: It is important to decide at the very onset as to what envisioned role of the portal is: On one hand, the portal can aspire to be the channel of content; on the other hand, the portal can be the content developer. The positioning will influence the eventual design and team that is running the portal. Both value propositions are different and require a different set of capabilities. Doing both at the same time is not advisable. 6. Sustaining a portal requires a long time horizon: Creating stickiness and keeping a portal alive requires human resources and funds. Most portals have between 5-10 people and an annual running cost of USD VC4Africa, for example, has a team of 10 people, including four in-house tech developers to keep the portal active. Ye Community as well has 3 full time people and 5 interns, but plans to have 15 people full time to run the portal as envisioned. From a fund-raising point of view, starting a new portal is challenging as it is extremely difficult to raise funds for a new online portal with no track record. According to 21

22 stakeholder feedback, it requires multiple hundreds of thousands of users to create revenue streams such as freemium, subscription models or advertisement models. A time horizon of at least three years and focused effort to build traction on the platform is required to prepare for potential revenue streams. 7. Align incentives of partners: When portals involve different kind of stakeholders, it is important to keep incentives in mind. Many portals work with content partners; however, feedback shows it is difficult to get ongoing commitment. It is hence critical to design the portal in a way that it becomes a pull-factor for contributors to provide support, rather than a push factor: For example, VC4Africa s support organization and program market place is so attractive for organizations because VC4Africa guarantees visibility to a network of people registered on the platform. A logo alone on the platform is not a sustained incentive for most institutions and smarter incentives need to be created to on-board portal partners. In the case of IB Accelerator, a consortium of three organizations plans to create a business model that ensures that all three organizations have a financial win from the portal after the initial grant-funding runs out. 8. Collaborate instead of competing with existing solutions: Stakeholders in the ecosystem clearly articulated the need for consolidation and collaboration instead of creating stand-alone solutions, especially in cases where funding is not visible. Organizations highlighted the risk that any new solution can drive away traffic from existing solutions and contribute to the overall application fatigue already visible in the ecosystem. Instead of duplicating and competing with existing initiatives, it is much more prudent to collaborate with existing online portals and contribute to expanding existing initiatives. 9. You have one chance, use it well: Online solutions come up every day and hence entrepreneurs and users have very short attention spans in the virtual world. It is hence important to create immediate value to the target group, as users have little patience. Feedback from stakeholders hence suggests the need to get it right in the first place, as you only have one chance. It is hence critical to build traction of happy users first and ensure that these users return. 10. Build on physical networks and communities: Successful online portals suggested tapping on offline efforts to build networks and communities of entrepreneurs. Many online solutions have an off-line element as well that allows entrepreneurs to make offline connections which can later be brought to a virtual world. Examples of successful communities include Business Fights Poverty, which started off as a physical network of practitioners. First insights on revenue streams and sustainability Stakeholder interactions with successful portals of different types suggest that discovery platforms or market places and ecosystem solutions take a long time to create sustainable revenue streams. There are different types of models adopted to generate revenue for an online portal. The most successful being the advertising model The other methods that are generally adopted include sponsorship model wherein users receive access to sponsored content, channels, database; affiliate marketing wherein the publisher signs up for affiliate programs related to their service/content and convert their users to customers of their affiliates/advertisers 13. Most of the portals interviewed are dependent on donor funding or have been depending on donor funding in the initial years. Stakeholders indicate the following possible revenue stream to be considered for the UNDP portal:

23 Membership fee and Subscription-based content: VC4Africa charges membership fees to investors and provides subscription based content. Business Fights Poverty also started out with membership fees; however, discovered that this model is difficult to sustain in a virtual world with constantly competing content. Freemium model: Many online communities are very nascent and plan to launch freemium services once a critical mass of more than users has been reached. Listings and advertisements: VC4Africa charges for listing of business service providers on the platform. This is a freemium service: A basic version is free; a more curated listing comes against a fee. Grant funding & programmatic fund raising: Stakeholder interviews indicate that a portal requires core funding ranging from USD 100,000 to USD 500,000 in the initial years. For this, most organizations raise grant funding. Others offer programmatic service offerings, e.g. helping institutions to source enterprises or running end-to-end programs. While this is a good revenue stream, it distracts organizations from the core value proposition, which is why many organizations at some point stop this revenue stream and only do this in the boot-strapping phase where no other revenue streams exist. Data and analytics: Over time, platforms can generate valuable enterprise or ecosystem data that can be monetized in a smart way and productized. VC4Africa, for example, comes out with an annual report and plans to launch an enterprise performance index that uses data generated through the portal. Other portals come out with ecosystem benchmarks and indices. Products: Related to the point on data, the portal can generate specific products such as benchmarking offerings that can be monetized. Challenge as a service offering: A challenge run on the portal can be a smart mechanism to sustain the portal. A prominent example is Business Fights Poverty who has packaged their service offering in the form of a challenge. The platform runs challenges between 3-9 months for different stakeholders, moderating a process of solution development. Each challenge is funded by a consortium of organizations that use the challenge to reach certain outcomes. Insights on resources, partners and portal content drivers All online portals have a set of partners through which they work and create and deliver value. Broadly, the following categories of partners can be defined: 1. Portal Management: Portal management can either be an internal function or outsourced to a third party organization who runs and manages the portal content. Depending on the functionality of the portal, this team would include content writers, editors who create content and support staff that sources content and works with content partners.. 2. Content partners: If content is not created in-house, content partners are critical to source or create content. Some portals such as Practitioner s Hub have a MoU with content partners who commit to a minimum number of contributions per year and get visibility on the portal as content partners. Business Fights Poverty adopts cross posting strategy, where content is posted across portals. If pure content aggregation is the objective, smart crowd-sourcing tools are possible; however, this requires a tech-team that keeps this mechanism smooth. 3. Technology Partners: Depending on the resources available, online portals have a tech development team in-house or on sub-contract basis. For more complex tech solutions it is advisable to have the tech-development team in-house. VC4Africa has a tech team of 4 people in-house. YE Community is working with an external tech team. 4. Dissemination, Marketing & Traffic: All portals we spoke to emphasized the need to have dissemination partners or marketing teams that help dissemination of the portal and drive traffic to the portal. YE Community, for example, worked with local hubs that are co-branded as YE Communities; however, managing those communities requires additional resources. 23

24 Overall, marketing efforts is underestimated and existing portals emphasized the need to keep marketing budgets aside. 5. Volunteers & Portal drivers: Arrangements such as portal drivers and volunteers have been tried and tested; however, the feedback is that incentives matter and individuals often get distracted. Feedback from stakeholders highlighted the importance of partnering with likeminded institutions with a similar mandate who are more accountable, rather than with individuals. Organizations are easier to approach and incentivize for contributing content as they have their logo published on the portal, which gives them additional visibility. Stakeholders we interviewed were interested in exploring partnering in the portal as content partners or co-hosts. However, open questions all stakeholders were interested were related to: What is the impact UNDP aims to create? What is the role UNDP aims to have in the portal beyond March 2017? What is the anticipated governance structure and the arrangement between portal hosts and UNDP? Whose Intellectual Property is the envisioned platform? Is UNDP open to support existing solutions with similar objectives instead of creating a new solution? Is there core funding for the initial years? Figure 14: Interest areas of collaboration of select partners 24

25 Insights from donor-supported online solutions and portals In recent years, online solutions have gained popularity among donors and funders as their initial setup cost is lean and the promise of technology to reach millions of people is tempting. However, few donor initiated programs have succeeded and the cemetery of dead online portals is growing. Below, we have summarized key lessons generated when analyzing successful donor funded initiatives: 1. Ownership and commitment: It is important to identify a partner who will own the portal and committed to run it after the grant-funding is exhausted. 2. Flexibility: With this ownership, however, the portal host needs to be given freedom and flexibility to run the portal as a business and to pivot and adapt content and business model as required. 3. Governance: The portal hence needs to be governed in a lean fashion; in case donors and funders still want to be involved in governance of portal, decision making mechanism needs to be quick and lean as to allow the portal management team to respond to changing requirements quickly. 4. Business plan and viability: Many donor-funded programs start off with very ambitious objectives and often a complex value proposition, not having in mind the business model and eventual revenue streams of the model. Lean models that prove viability early tend to be more successful and scalable. 5. Initial core funding: While a business plan is important, most portals do not plan to break even before 3 years; hence gap funding is required in the initial years. Many donors stop their funding after the initial design phase and do not provide follow-on funding. Platforms then find it difficult to sustain the portal, get distracted in fund-raising that is beyond their core-mandate and then often fail. Stakeholders representing successful portals have hence suggested that portal design and management should be viewed as a long term strategic plan of at least 3 years. 6. Recommendations for positioning of youth entrepreneurship portal While stakeholder interviews validated a clear need for UNDP to develop and launch a portal solution for strengthening the youth entrepreneurship ecosystem, the research, mapping and assessment of gaps suggests a whitespace for the UNDP portal in acting as a youth entrepreneurship ecosystem catalyst. Applying the suggested design criteria, we recommend that the planned portal does not attempt to provide finance, mentorship or information on the new platform, but rather leverages existing portals. Instead, we recommend a positioning as ecosystem catalyst, which uses online portal to facilitate finance, mentorship, information and networking. We recommend creating a unique initiative around the function as ecosystem catalyst, while linking with existing portals and solutions that provide finance, mentorship and information (see Figure 15). 25

26 Figure 15: Positioning of the Youth Portal The detailed options will be assessed in the next phase of the design study and after initial feedback of UNDP. However, we suggest the following design options: 1. Gateway of Gateway : In this function, the portal acts as an ecosystem catalyst by creating a market infrastructure for the industry and aggregating existing information, access to finance and mentoring portals as well as communities. Youth-focused programs and portals would list themselves at the portal through micro-sites. This function could be addressed by providing a directory or an interactive tool on which enterprises list themselves. (Information as core) 2. Mentorship Market Place: In this function, the portal acts as an ecosystem catalyst by aggregating offline and online mentorship opportunities specifically and making this the core value proposition of the portal. Youth entrepreneurs would find mentors for off-line mentoring through this online channel. (Mentoring as core) 3. Idea stage youth entrepreneurship ecosystem: In this function, the portal would act as ecosystem catalyst by creating a virtual ecosystem specifically for idea-stage youth entrepreneurs, providing them with structured mentoring support and access to funding. Sourcing would happen through thematic challenges, for example agriculture, fintech, women entrepreneurs. Enterprise selection criteria would include years of operations, first revenue, social impact. (Funding as core) 4. Ecosystem Challenge: In this function, the portal acts as an ecosystem catalyst by providing grant funding to a defined set of youth entrepreneurship focused ecosystem activities (e.g. business plan competitions, local awards, and pitch events). Sourcing would happen through the challenge, which can be thematic as well e.g. focused on women-entrepreneurship focused business plan competitions. The challenge would have the objective to support local catalytic activities that would be seeded with the help of the ecosystem grant. (Networking & community building as core). These options need to be further assessed based on feedback of UNDP and having the ambition and success metrics of UNDP in mind. A combination of the above design options is also feasible e.g. the portal could include a Gateway of Gateway but also run a challenge, which is either enterprise focused or targeting the ecosystem challenge. 26

27 7. Portal play-zone Defining a Portal ambition Our research suggests multiple design options the planned youth entrepreneurship portal and it is hence critical to have more choices based on the ambition. Before going into a design of any portal ( Where to play? ) and defining how to get there ( How to win? ), a clear definition of what success would look like is critical and defining success metrics is critical. Based on the research findings and mapping as well as the design considerations, following are the questions that would guide the portal design in the next phase: Figure 16: Making strategic choices What does success look like in 3 years? What should the portal be known for? What are success metrics? Defining an ambition statement helps clearer articulation of what success looks like, making it tangible for internal and external stakeholders and helping communication with potential hosts and portal partners. An example of an ambition statement is provided below;. The ambition statement is ambitious, yet concrete and tangible and hence helps to set boundaries. Figure 17: Indicative Ambition Statement Related to the ambition statement, UNDP would define markers of success which shall guide the development process. Portal design considers the success metrics based on what UNDP aims to achieve these success metrics are on the enterprise level, the ecosystem or on the community level through the social impact that is being created by enterprises. 27

28 Figure 18: Indicative list of success markers 28

29 8. Annex Annex 1: Portal Case Studies StartupWave Target entrepreneurs Section A: About the Portal Operating since Early stage enterprises 2014 Key Value proposition Virtual pre- and incubation platform Access to funding and partners through demo day Network of mentors, business services provides, investors Opportunity board & One-Stop Service Geographies of operation Kenya and plans to go Pan- Africa Brief description of service offerings StartupWave is a virtual incubation platform that has been built as an infrastructure for the startup incubation ecosystem, conceptualized by Intellecap in partnership with Government of UK s Department for International Development and GIZ on behalf of the German Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and first launched in India before expanding it to Africa. It aims to provide a blend of online and physical support to enterprises in any location. Being a virtual platform, it can be accessed by anyone anywhere. It complements the efforts of incubators by providing webinars, online mentoring, etc. As a collaborative platform, it aims to democratize incubation and is a one-stop service, providing a blend of virtual and in-person support to take startup enterprises from idea to investment stage. Most of the entrepreneurs are youth entrepreneurs, while 1/3 are women entrepreneurs. Information (content) creation & updation strategy StartupWave team members update the content on the portal, which is crowd-sourced from the wider ecosystem Its network of partners helps in developing content in the form of videos that are uploaded on the portal. Part of the content is created by StartupWave team, e.g. videos on the business model canvas elements The content on the portal is available in different categories like, Business Modelling, Operations Management, Fund Raising, Growth Strategies, Partnerships and so on. Users can also browse information by themes like Women Empowerment, Climate Change, Youth, and Africa Information dissemination strategy Regularly publishes newsletters for its users on the portal 29

30 Mentorship approach StartupWave provides services in two distinct phases - pre-incubation and incubation. Pre-incubation services are designed for idea to pilot stage start-ups and are designed to help them get accepted into incubators. Incubation services will be launched soon and will be designed to help start-ups raise investment. Pre-incubation phase: An entrepreneur can join the platform and get access to personalized dashboard, use videos and resources on StarupWave Garbage. By using interactive online workshop and entrepreneur can build ideas using business model canvas Post that S/he can submit completed canvas to evaluation committee and receive feedback on the business model Shortlisted entrepreneurs are invited to fill application form to StartupWave's partner incubators where incubators review and accept the invitation to join them Incubation: Entrepreneurs have access to mentors that are listed on the platform where they can reach out to any business related issues Financing approach StarupWave regularly organizes Demo Days for entrepreneurs where they can pitch to investors for initial funding support. It customize investor groups invited to each Demo Day by investment sizes, sectors, instruments (debt, equity, and grant) Networking approach Organizes one day boot camp providing entrepreneurs with face-to-face feedback from a mix of mentors from the business sector and the local start-up ecosystem Partnership engagement strategy Mentors are on boarded without any financial support Enterprises on the platform are not charged Business services providers and investors on the platform are not charged The incentive for investors and partners to be on the platform is to get access to enterprises and build a pipeline Existing partners Content partners Network of experts that provide content through videos and articles Dissemination partners Internal newsletters; network of incubators and other support providers who are referring enterprises to the platform Mentors/Mentorship partners Network of mentors Financing partners GIZ, DFID, Shell Foundation, Argidius Foundation and USAID 30

31 Other partners Network of 100+ partners including incubators, investors, corporates and business service providers. Costs Staffing needs/team Size 3 member team Other costs Portal running & adjustments by IT team Marketing costs Demo day Revenues streams / Sustainability The platform is currently donor funded but plans to become sustainable in future by running challenges on the platform and creating a freemium model for business service providers Section B: Insights & Recommendations for UNDP Portal Design Key gaps in the youth entrepreneurship ecosystems Few players are engaged in pre-incubation stage Less connectivity to entrepreneurial support system among young entrepreneurs and hence a need for a virtual platform Phase by phase & milestone-based enterprises development support for young entrepreneurs Structured mentoring support instead of ad-hoc, one-off mentoring sessions Key challenges for African youth entrepreneurs Lack of supporting ecosystem for young entrepreneurs in the pre-incubation stage, especially to help them articulate their business idea and to move from idea to business plan stage. Entrepreneurs in remote areas lack access to entrepreneurial ecosystem support due to geographic locations and lack of quality service providers Leveraging social media StarupWave uses social media platform like Twitter and Facebook page to engage with young entrepreneurs on the platform. Other insights on strategic considerations for UNDP portal design Building and running a platform is investment and resource intensive Online mentorship and financing needs to have an offline connection. e.g. Demo Days Regularly updating the content is a challenging task; a better method would be to source information which is out there and act as an aggregator. Potential areas of collaboration with UNDP portal Run challenges for UNDP through StartupWave platform Run youth entrepreneurship pre-incubation and incubation track on StartUpWave Share information directory and opportunity board Leverage Sankalp to recognize youth entrepreneurs (e.g. for awarding the challenge, providing access to funding) Leveraging Intellecap s investor network for providing access to funding 31

32 Ye! Community Section A: About the Portal Target entrepreneurs Operating since Youth 2014 Key Value proposition Geographies of operation Information on business support through country guides Ye! local communities Access to mentorship Access to funding Business tools Global but with largest number of entrepreneurs in Africa Brief description of service offerings Ye! Community is an initiative led by Child and Youth Finance International. It is an online platform that connects young entrepreneurs (between 16 to 30 years) globally to various tools, resources and opportunities to support the growth of their start-ups. It provides an online community, country guides, coaching and funding opportunities to young entrepreneurs. Its mission is to support youth entrepreneurship, promote ethical entrepreneurial culture, and stimulate job creation. Information (content) creation & updation strategy Ye! Community provides information through country guides and blog posts. In order to create new content and regularly update the content, portal has partnered with existing community hubs in each country, which are co-branded as YE-communities. If a country does not have a community hub a new group is specifically created. Content partners submitting the content are featured on the portal. Information dissemination strategy Ye! Community regularly publishes newsletters for its users on the portal. Publishes entrepreneurs profile and blog posts to facilitate interaction and maintain traffic on the portal. Mentorship approach An entrepreneur can approach a mentor through the Ye! database and get connected to him. Currently, a member can send a maximum of 3 messages to coaches per month through the website. Interested mentors may approach an entrepreneur and provide mentorship services. Alternately, an applicant can send coaching application to the Ye! team. The team reviews and gets back to the applicant with an appropriate coach. Financing approach Ye! connects young entrepreneurs to funding opportunities via pitching events where in it selects 8-10 start-ups for each pitching event. It provides opportunity to entrepreneurs to fundraise and network with members. YE! award program is a most intervention. 32

33 Networking approach YE Community aims to be a community by the youth and for the youth It offers training to early-stage entrepreneurs via boot camps, workshops and webinars. It organizes pitching events for entrepreneurs to connect with investors and policy makers. Partnership engagement strategy Local content providers are the active partners contributing on the portal. They are cobranded on the platform. Existing partners Content partners Local community hubs Dissemination partners Internal newsletters Mentors/Mentorship partners Coaches and experts in their network Financing partners Child and Youth International Finance Other partners Strategic partners: The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), European Union, MasterCard, European Fund to SouthEast Europe, The MasterCard Foundation Costs Staffing needs/team Size Revenues streams / Sustainability About member with 2-3 as permanent members and rest as interns. They need 3 people for each section on the website (Mentorship, Funding, Tools, Information) along with local partners for country guides. Currently, the portal is running with the support of public funding. This funding is available for a period of three years; however it plans to build a sustainable business model for future revenues. Options to be explored for the sustainability include: adoption of freemium model, advertisement as a stream for revenue generation, charging membership fees, charging corporate partner (BSP) for listing them on the portal, organizing events, and awards. Initially the Ye! aims to get users for the portal and then generate revenue. It is estimated that it takes about 3 years for a portal to generate revenue/become sustainable. Section B: Insights & Recommendations for UNDP Portal Design Key gaps in the youth entrepreneurship ecosystems Lack of seed financing support for young entrepreneurs. Absence of finance for ecosystem building activities and a community treasure box that youth networks can use to run youth entrepreneurship activities (alternate financing). That helps in mobilizing youth towards networking, building ecosystem and entrepreneurial activities. 33

34 Key challenges for African youth entrepreneurs Funding is the major challenge in the youth entrepreneurship space. As banks and other financial institutions do not provide loans without any collateral support and work experience. Leveraging social media Ye! Community has both a social media page for the website and a community of young entrepreneurs on the website. According to Ye! Community, a social media page and a separate community page serve different purposes. Social media helps in interaction and promotion whereas a community page helps in information dissemination. In order to get outreach for the portal, mobile app or SMS based services can serve the purpose. Other insights on strategic considerations for UNDP portal design Building a platform is investment and resource heavy. Cost incurred for building Ye! Community is EUR 60,000. A team of members is running the portal. Creating a separate portal will divide traffic. It can make the portal less functional and difficult to reach scale. It is also difficult at an entrepreneurial level to keep track of different portals. Portal drivers need to be incentivized and followed up regularly to keep information content updated regularly. Online mentorship needs to be articulated. Entrepreneurs require offline connectivity along with online support. Online portal restricts itself to youth that have access to internet and are tech savvy. This may exclude audience that actually need entrepreneurship support and may end up reaching ones that are already being served. Potential areas of collaboration with UNDP portal Development of Africa side of the portal. As the Ye! Community foresees that in future it will have to segment their website according to users and regions, this collaboration may very well serve the objective. Build the outreach of the portal by co-organizing and co-creating awards and events for youth entrepreneurship. This will help in connecting online and offline services. Co-brand the communities on the portal. Mara Mentor Target entrepreneurs Section A: About the Portal Operating since All entrepreneurs, and specifically women through Mara Women 2009 Key Value proposition Online Mentorship Geographies of operation Pan Africa Brief description of service offerings 34

35 Mara Mentor is an online mentoring platform that assists young and women entrepreneurs grow their business dreams through exchange of ideas, guidance, learning and connecting with like-minded people. The platform is a meeting ground to network with industry leaders, share knowledge and adapt to business landscape regionally and globally. Information (content) creation & updation strategy Since it is an online platform every country has its content drivers that run their own theme and agenda. There are different initiatives for South Africa, Nigeria, and Kenya etc. Mentors from different countries contribute in content creation. Discussion forum, events and their institutional partners (universities) help in generating content for the platform. They also have a case study on their platform by Harvard Business School. Information dissemination strategy Regularly publishes newsletters Mentorship approach It provides online business-training program DreamBuilder developed by Thunderbird School of Management. It is an online business-training program that helps entrepreneurs to build their business or help in growing their business. Through the program participants can connect with like-minded entrepreneurs, seek out mentors for guidance and support, and harness advice and relative information created through the news feed and discussion forums on the training platform. The e-platform has over 600,000 active entrepreneurs across 30 African countries. An individual can sign in with an aim to seek some business advice from an experienced industry professional. Mentees can use the platform to showcase their business idea and reach out to like-minded individuals to identify new business opportunities. On the other hand mentors are encouraged to share general business tips and resources, get involved in discussions and offer one-on-one advice to those that need it. Networking approach Entrepreneurs can interact with online community and have a discussion. Partnership engagement strategy Partnered with different mentors on the basis of their own networks who regularly provide mentorship support. Some countries have more mentors whereas some of them have less. Kenya has 80 mentors. Incentive for mentors is that they can attend these networking forums and conferences and get connected to entrepreneurs offline and understand their businesses Partnership with institutional partners encourages students to submit content on the platform. Mentors also submit content on the platform (non-financial partnership) Existing partners Content partners Mentors and their institutional partners. Mentors/Mentorship partners Individual experts 35

36 Financing partners Mara Foundation Other partners The National Youth Development Agency (NYDA), Vodacom, ThinkYoung, The Entrepreneurship School, Absa Bank Limited (Absa Bank), MTN Group Costs Staffing needs/team Size Lean team with 2 members and content partners Revenues streams / Sustainability The portal runs on a philanthropic model and receives funding from the Foundation. Section B: Insights & Recommendations for UNDP Portal Design Key gaps in the youth entrepreneurship ecosystems Discussion forums and conferences are important for networking among the stakeholders. Strategic connections and partnership building are key for entrepreneurs Arranging chat rooms on specific topics for networking. Business stage specific funding players. Lack of quality mentors. Lack of navigator that assists early stage enterprises to navigate in their initial phases. Key challenges for African youth entrepreneurs Access to funding, mentorship support, and access to information were the major challenges in the ecosystem from the perspective of young entrepreneurs. Most of the entrepreneurs think that access to funding is the most critical support; however, it is mentoring that can support in accessing funding and hence according to Mara Mentor, it is the top priority. There is a mismatch between mentors and entrepreneurs available in the ecosystem; more demand than supply of mentors. Information and knowledge gap exists in the ecosystem. Entrepreneurs generally are not aware of whom to approach at initial phases. Enterprises at different business stages require different funding and need to be addressed accordingly. It is also important to have peer to peer interaction on any online portal. Leveraging social media Launched Mara-Mentor app. Other insights on strategic considerations for UNDP portal design Physical meeting and networking is difficult and expensive. Hence to cut down the cost and reach scale virtual model has been adopted. Minimum value proposition and focus on specific area. Serving multiple areas requires specialized resources. Currently the portal offers services in English and plans to offer services in multiple languages in future. Potential areas of collaboration with UNDP portal Partnership decisions need to be taken at the management level 36

37 Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) Network Section A: About the Portal Target entrepreneurs Operating since Youth 2010 Key Value proposition Network of young leaders and entrepreneurs (YALI Network) YALI Regional Leadership Centers Online Courses Geographies of operation Pan Africa Brief description of service offerings President Obama launched Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) Network in 2010 to support young African leaders to spur growth and prosperity, strengthen democratic governance, across Africa. It has three initiatives - The Mandela Washington Fellowship, YALI Regional Leadership Centers (RLC) and YALI Networks. YALI has an alumni network of 4000 members. Mentorship approach The Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders brings 500 young African leaders, from across the continent to the United States for 6 weeks of leadership training and mentoring at twenty U.S. universities and colleges in three areas: business and entrepreneurship, civic engagement and public administration. USAID provides follow on support, mentorship, internship, professional development skills, leadership skills and speaker sponsorship. The program receives 50,000 applications form which 500 of them are selected. Students select the course of their preference, however, it is seen that most of these entrepreneurs have their own businesses or some prior experience while they join the program. Business and entrepreneurship course receives 40% of the applications whereas public management receives least of it. YALI Regional Leadership Centers (RLC) in Africa provides training, mentoring, and networking support to young leaders than can be reached through the Mandela Washington Fellowship. These RLC are located in Kenya, South Africa, Senegal, and Ghana. The RLC offers in-person training programs. It also has an online component (RLC South Africa) which is not very active. Selection Criteria The Mandela Washington Fellowship selects individual between age group of Most of them are mid-level career professionals. YALI RLC selects the individuals between the age group of Individuals must be from Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) region. Individual must have demonstrated success in leadership and community engagement, acted as a building bock in a community, comes with an aim of building network and giving back to society. Networking approach YALI Network - The YALI Network provides members with opportunities to connect with other leaders in their community and to learn from experts in their field. Network members have access to resources such as online training courses and special events in their area. More than 250,000 young African leaders have joined the network. The 37

38 U.S. Department of States does not fund the Network. YALI adopts Community of Practice method where more entrepreneurs come together in a group for a short period of time and get involved in discussing ecosystem building activities. It is mostly a virtual network. However, the challenge is that they lack vision and mentorship support for these communities of practice. Physically they get connected on Presidential Summit and at Regional Conferences; beyond that they work virtually. There are about Community of Practice groups currently operating. Engagement with Fellows All the projects at YALI have monitoring and evaluation framework. The program undertakes surveys and tracks impact of leadership training through M&E questionnaire. However, they do not track long term impact. It encourages alumni network. For Mandela Fellowship program the State Department has its own infrastructure in place for fellows via an engagement program. However, there is an interest of YALI to engage more with alumni groups post the fellowship. YALI RLC has alumni engagement program and has also formed online networking groups. However, it started only a year ago and it is still figuring out a way to engage with them. Existing partners Mentors/Mentorship partners Universities who hosts Mandela Washington Fellowship Program Financing partners The US State Department. The program has received US$ mn of funding for all the three initiatives. Other partners Universities, corporations, NGOs, and government institutions Revenues streams / Sustainability It is a US Government funded program (US$ mn). It does not charge participants in the program Section B: Insights & Recommendations for UNDP Portal Design Key gaps in the youth entrepreneurship ecosystems Sufficient networking opportunities like events, and conferences Lack of funding support for the young entrepreneurs. Lack of ecosystem and alumni community activities that help people who participated in a program to scale to the next level Key challenges for African youth entrepreneurs Access to capital for business growth. Building networks for access different business related services. The challenge is to continue building networks. Leveraging social media 38

39 Greater need for leveraging existing networking platforms rather creating a new network. Platforms like WatsApp, Linkedin etc. can be leveraged. Other insights on strategic considerations for UNDP portal design Catalysing ecosystem is a better approach than focusing on individuals. There have been a couple of examples where the associations of regional networks have come together and collaborated. In Uganda RLC alumni network had collaborated to raise funds for running a conference. The U.S. embassies have awarded small grants to YALI alumni groups supporting youth development in Africa. These grants are directed towards community awareness, promotion of education etc. Potential areas of collaboration with UNDP portal The UNDP Youth Portal can get connected with the YALI Networks to run the ecosystem catalysing Challenges. Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) Section A: About the Portal Target entrepreneurs Intermediaries and through intermediaries small and growing enterprises Key Value proposition Network of 262 member organizations - Globally Regional chapters and working groups Operating since 2012 West Africa Geographies of operation East Africa West Africa Brief description of service offerings South Africa The Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) is a global membership network of organizations that propel entrepreneurship in emerging markets. ANDE members provide critical financial, educational, and business support services to small and growing businesses (SGBs). The ANDE West Africa supports SGB ecosystem through training, knowledge dissemination, and collaborative events. The West Africa office is relatively nascent. Information (content) creation & updation strategy ANDE member have access to searchable database, knowledge library, and collaboration space. The member organizations continuously publish research reports. Information dissemination strategy Regularly publishes newsletters that provides summaries of new research published on related topic-areas Reports published by the member organizations published on the ANDE database Mentorship approach ANDE identifies common strategic challenges and opportunities that small business entrepreneurs face and, based on these findings, develops programs and services for members and the sector as a whole. Specific program for the members include: o Advocacy and Education o Capacity Development Fund 39

40 o o o o Knowledge Sharing and Networking Metrics and Impact Assessment Research Training and Talent Development Financing approach ANDE organizes challenges with its financing partners to provide funding to scalable business models that require US$20,000 - US$250,000 in early stage capital. The ANDE Catalyst Fund aims to improve collaboration and capacity of organizations. The fund has been supported by The Lemelson Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Shell Foundation. More than US$ 2.3mn has been disbursed to 34 member organizations. Each year the grant selection process focuses on different areas of impact based on funder interest. Networking approach Regularly organizes events, programs and training and networking sessions for the member organizations. Members also have access to regional chapters and working groups. Partnership engagement strategy Member organizations that publish content on the website are incentivized by featuring them on the website and reaching out to other organizations through its network. Existing partners Content partners Member organizations Costs Staffing needs/team Size About 2-3 members represent the regional network. Revenues streams / Sustainability Charges membership fees to the organizations joining the network. The fee charged is based upon the kind of organization joining the network. Section B: Insights & Recommendations for UNDP Portal Design Key gaps in the youth entrepreneurship ecosystems Adequate tools and templates related to business development and management. Platform that provides access to information for early stage enterprises. Online portal to create engagement among users. Internet accessibility. Key challenges for African youth entrepreneurs West Africa is an emerging market and social entrepreneurship development is gaining traction in West Africa. Major challenge is access to information. Youth find it challenging to access information especially regarding funding, skill development training and other sectors. That is where technology can play an important role. Youth lack support in business management mostly around business plan development, structuring the business plan, and different aspects of business. Lack of peer to peer interaction Entrepreneurs do not have access to capacity development programs and this can be 40

41 addressed through providing tools and templates that help in developing their business. Funding runs across all the 4 pillars. As entrepreneurs need funding to again access to information; mentorship support; and for networking (attending conference) Internet penetration to access information from online resources Leveraging social media It is beneficial to use existing platform like Facebook chat, Instagram and others to create interaction among users and reaching out to the target audience. Other insights on strategic considerations for UNDP portal design The two critical success factors of an online portal is content development and engagement with users Have local content e.g. country specific content on the portal to help entrepreneurs understand the country level policies and support systems Provide and support different youth engagement opportunities. These can include information on events, other engagement opportunities, fellowship information, conferences, scholarship opportunities that can drive the stickiness on the portal. Organize online training and webinar for entrepreneurs to help them to understand the space without really being physically present e.g. Coursera. The video content really adds value to the portal by making it easier for users to access and understand information. Potential areas of collaboration with UNDP portal ANDE and UNDP can collaborate on content creation and mobilizing users on the platform. Collaborate to leverage member who provide capacity development to entrepreneurs in different sectors ANDE s partnerships with different universities can be leveraged to get user sign up for the portal. The incentive structure for the partnership would depend on the level of collaboration and involvement. Factors like content creation, capacity development, resources involved would decide the structure of partnership. In case of original content creation and capacity development it would require financial assistance whereas, low touch involvement and contributing what is already a mandate of ANDE will not require any financial support. MasterCard Foundation Section A: About the Portal Target entrepreneurs Operating since All 2006 Key Value proposition Programs, Summits, Scholarships Geographies of operation Pan Africa Brief description of service offerings 41

42 The MasterCard Foundation supports youth learning and promotes financial inclusion in developing countries. Its Youth Learning Program promotes financial education, and seeks to use the market to benefit youth and prepare them for job opportunities. The program aims to scale access to education in Sub-Saharan Africa and develop employment-seeking skills in youth. The Foundation runs three key competitions for youth entrepreneurs. Its Management Demonstration Prize provides grant to encourage aspiring youth to become entrepreneurs while its Seed Capital Prize awards existing youth entrepreneurs with the best business model or business plan. The foundation s Anzisha Prize is positioned as a fellowship program for youth entrepreneurs. Aspiring youth entrepreneurs are selected and trained to participate in the program. Beyond providing grant money for their businesses, the program has a broader objective of supporting them to become leaders via mentorship by experts on the diverse aspects of leadership ranging from how to plan their operations to how to manage people. Apart from these three programs, the foundation also runs a Scholars Program for providing disadvantaged youth with access to education. Financing approach Challenge Competition and challenges are important as they motivate and keep entrepreneurs engaged. The purpose behind initiating a competition is to give them capital support to grow their business. There are 3 different forms of competition: 1. Demonstration grant: It includes getting engaged with institution and demonstrate them how to grow their business. A few enterprises receive prize money and training on aspects how to grow their business idea. It can also include helping them in hiring people or in other business areas. 2. Seed capital: This process involved running a competition, whereas the winner of the challenge receives seed funding. 3. Fellowship: This form includes the selection of few entrepreneurs for a fellowship program, which engages them longer and builds a network of young entrepreneurs. Engagement with winners The Anzisha Prize selects 500 applicants who successfully complete the online application process. All the applicants are then trained to compete for the Prize for becoming fellows. The competition finally selects 12 fellows for competing for the prize money every year. Till date, Anzisha has created alumni of 100 fellows. The Anzisha prize has a total pool of USD 75,000 which is awarded to 3 of the 12 shortlisted fellows. The winner, the second runner-up and the third runner-up are awarded USD 35,000, USD 25,000 and USD 15,000 respectively. Beyond the three prize money winners, all the 12 fellows are provided with sustained mentorship, networking and business development support. Anzisha Fellows become part of a network and receive structured support over a period of time as well as a large alumni network after program completion. The prize helps young entrepreneurs get visibility and media coverage and hence is important for brand building. Monitoring of impacts for prize and awards has proven to be more difficult, which is why the foundation shifted to a program and fellowship approach, which makes it easier to measure and demonstrate impacts at the level of the entrepreneur. Partnership engagement strategy MasterCard Foundation has partnered with African Leadership Academy that manages Anzisha prize. The funding of US$ 9.5mn has been allocated to run the awards for 6 years. Existing partners Other partners African Leadership Academy manages the Anzisha Prize 42

43 Costs Staffing needs/team Size About 4-5 people leading the team with support of other 100 people for managing the awards Section B: Insights & Recommendations for UNDP Portal Design Key gaps in the youth entrepreneurship ecosystems There is need for a one-stop solution for young entrepreneurs. Enterprises need access to resources like toolkits and business model tools along with training and capacity building programs. Another gap is lack of networking platforms and online and/or offline communities, events, conferences focused on youth entrepreneurs. There is a lack finance for youth entrepreneurs, especially for idea-stage entrepreneurs. Key challenges for African youth entrepreneurs Needs of young entrepreneurs are different from those of older and matured entrepreneurs. Access to finance is the most important challenge that entrepreneurs face. They need help in discovering opportunities as well as get access to training on aspects such as financial and business management. Networking is also one of the key challenges faced by an entrepreneur, especially for entrepreneurs at the idea stage. Entrepreneurs also need access to resources which includes capital, human resource, market linkages and ability to navigate the ecosystem. Leveraging social media Usage of social media is important for leveraging existing information and reaching out to different audiences. Other insights on strategic considerations for UNDP portal design Need for a one stop shop that address all the challenges related to youth entrepreneurship Use the existing platforms and connect them via one gateway UNDP Youth portal can act as an aggregator of online resources Potential areas of collaboration with UNDP portal Next year (2017) is the year of learning for MasterCard Foundation via analysing gaps in the ecosystem. Hence the foundation will not provide any financial support to new initiatives. The Foundation can collaborate on non-financial aspects like endorsement and leveraging networks. Venture Capital for Africa (VC4Africa), Inclusive Business Accelerator (IBA) Target entrepreneurs Growth and opportunity driven entrepreneurs Section A: About the Portal Operating since VC4Africa: 2007 IBA:

44 Key Value proposition Online connectivity Online mentorship and connection to investors. Inclusive business focus IBA Brief description of service offerings Geographies of operation VC4 Africa: Pan Africa IB Accelerator: Currently in Uganda, Mozambique plans to expand to pan Africa VC4Africa: VC4Africa is an African platform for start-up funding, the online community of entrepreneurs and investors. Key feature of the platform is that it facilitates access to free online tools, mentorship opportunities and capital raising for entrepreneurs. Program partners engage members with their programs and services. Investors can discover companies, research opportunities and follow up with founders directly. There are about 5000 enterprises listed on the website and registered users on the platform. It has 240 organizations on the platform and about 120 programs are being promoted via the portal. Inclusive Business Accelerator (IBA): IBA is the white labeled version of VC4Africa. It facilitates the acceleration of impact entrepreneurship. It provides innovation platform that connects social innovators, business coaches, impact investors and businesses. It specifically focuses on inclusive businesses and has about 250 companies listed on the platform. Information (content) creation & updation strategy Content on VC4Africa is partly crowd sourced through partners in order to create stickiness on the portal and partly created by internal team Event and program organizers reach out to VC4Africa to publish content (program and trainings) on the website due to their pan Africa presence. It also has a specialized job platform for organizations to list their opportunities. Engaged with large community contributors that specifically provide content for VC4Africa. Information dissemination strategy Leverages social media platform for information dissemination and creating outreach of the portal. Regularly publishes blogs and articles on the platform. About 4-8 articles are published and each month in order to maintain freshness of content. Regularly publishes newsletters. Mentorship approach VC4Africa has 200 mentors that are screened by the platform. When an enterprise applies for mentorship support, relevant mentors get alerts or are informed via newsletter. A mentor and an entrepreneur are connected on the platform and can take the discussion offline from thereon. Financing approach VC4Africa charges investors, US$39 per month to get access to deal flows. This helps them get connected to potential enterprises. Investors are provided with a dashboard to help them set criteria according to their preferences around geography, deal size, type of finance etc. Once there is a company that fits the criteria, it gets listed on the dashboard of the investor which then can be funded by them. Networking approach 44

45 Maintains open group discussions wherein audience can participate and contribute to the discussion. However, the maintenance of open group discussion could be a challenging task especially in navigating and focusing the discussion in a particular direction. Created a social media platform with the aim to create awareness and gain outreach the larger audience. Partnership engagement strategy Content partners (events and program organizers) reach out to VC4Africa to gain viability and reach out to larger audience. Mentors are incentivized through BDA method wherein initial services provided by the mentor is free of charge and later on mentors can charge based on the level of engagement. This may also convert into large assignments for mentors. Existing partners Content partners Event or program organizers, Community content contributors Dissemination partners Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn Mentors/Mentorship partners Individual expertise that are based globally Financing partners Public funding Other partners VC4Africa: 248 partner organizations. IBA: The BoP Innovation Center, SNV Netherlands Development Organisation, Venture Capital for Africa and Nyenrode Business School. Costs Staffing needs/team Size VC4Africa: 12 members IBA: Different stakeholders contribute in maintaining and updating the platform Revenues streams / Sustainability 45

46 VC4Africa: It charges US$39 a month to investors to get access to the deal flow. Business support organizations (partner organizations) are charged US$2500 per year for creating and refining their profiles on the website. The basic version is for free. It charges organizations who want to promote their activity and online learning via sponsorship model. IBA: The platform is the outcome of a 3 year program run by different partners based on the grant funding model. Post the grant funding period, the platform aims to run in a sustainable way wherein each partner will act as the stakeholder of the platform. It is developing a business model so that each partner can have a financial incentive. Section B: Insights & Recommendations for UNDP Portal Design Key gaps in the youth entrepreneurship ecosystems Lack of sufficient angel investing networks at pan Africa level. Consolidated directory which the UNDP portal can leverage in its role of a navigator portal. Lack of awareness among the young entrepreneurs about their needs and requirements. Key challenges for African youth entrepreneurs The challenges faced by youth entrepreneurs are not different than those for other entrepreneurs. One of them is lack of availability of seed funding for early stage enterprises. Youth entrepreneurs are not investment ready and need mentoring support. Lack of awareness on whom to approach for business advice in the early stages Leveraging social media The platform uses social media for information dissemination and reaching out to a larger audience. It does not have a mobile application as users prefer using mobile-enabled websites rather than applications. Other insights on strategic considerations for UNDP portal design Developing a portal should be thought from a long term perspective (5 year strategy) and should have a business model to sustain it. Building and sustaining a new online portal is a difficult task and requires time and effort. Many organizations have attempted to build a similar platform but have failed due to lack of funding support. English is the business language and therefore should be the primary language which the portal should be built on. Potential areas of collaboration with UNDP portal UNDP Youth portal, VC4Africa, and IBA have overlapping mandate hence it is beneficial to collaborate on different themes existing on VC4Africa rather than create a new portal. UNDP Youth portal as an aggregator website can direct users to different portals addressing specific agenda like mentorship, funding, information etc., 46

47 The Practitioner Hub for Inclusive Business Target entrepreneurs Section A: About the Portal Operating since Inclusive business 2010 Key Value proposition Inclusive business publication database Database of support organisations Database of inclusive businesses Geographies of operation Globally Brief description of service offerings The Practitioner Hub is an online platform that provides information on inclusive business models that combine commercial and social return. The Hub provides practical information plus insight for practitioners and facilitators of inclusive business. Information (content) creation & updation strategy The Hub provides knowledge about inclusive businesses through Search Inclusive Business (Search IB), the first online database of inclusive business resources. It offers insight and analysis of the latest trends, challenges and successes from its team and wide network of partners and showcases the work of its core partner programmes through micro-sites. The Hub receives blog contributions from practitioners all over the world. Posts include venture updates, research overviews, publication launches, opinion and reflective pieces. Members share their views and opinions with the Hub by posting blogs or comments. Content partners (15-20 members) on Search IB and the directory are asked to update the excel sheet with organizations and initiatives and then given to the developer to update on the website. Content partners get their logo published on the website. Information dissemination strategy Regularly publishes newsletters, monthly series of updates on opportunities and major events in the sector. Partnership engagement strategy Content partners are incentivized by branding them on the website. Existing partners Content partners member team that provides content. The publication database was developed by Inclusive Business Action Network and The Practitioner Hub. Financing partners DFID, Sida s Innovations Against Poverty (IAP) Other partners Inclusive Business Action Network, Connect to Grow, ADB 47

48 Costs Staffing needs/team Size Three member team that comprises of editor, marketing person, and a portal management person. Content partners (15-20 members) Revenues streams / Sustainability The Hub runs on public funding. It was created by DFID s Business Innovation Facility (BIF) and later SIDA s Innovations Against Poverty (IAP) joined and co-hosted the hub. In July 2014, Ashley Insights had hosted and funded the Hub, in partnership with a range of organisations. Strategic partners have microsites on the portal for which they are charged membership fees. Section B: Insights & Recommendations for UNDP Portal Design Key gaps in the youth entrepreneurship ecosystems Gateway for young entrepreneurs that help them navigate and access information. Specifically addressing challenges to youth and publish content and opportunities for youth. Sufficient funding institutions for early stage enterprises. Key challenges for African youth entrepreneurs Portal design needs to answer the question whether youth entrepreneurs need different information or they access information in a different way. This will decide the nature of the content, opportunities and features of the portal Access to finance is also one of the major challenges especially for young entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs also find it difficult to navigate content and other facilities available online e.g. toolkits, mentorship, funding. In this context, a gateway portal can play an important role in navigating through and directing traffic to specific sites. Leveraging social media Practitioner Hub tried building a community on their own website but that did not work and hence, it adopted social media engagement through Facebook. Other insights on strategic considerations for UNDP portal design The UNDP portal can act as a Ring Circle of Gateways. Circle of aligned actors can be used to link users to right portal from the UNDP portal. Portal drivers should be institutions rather than individuals as young entrepreneurs get distracted due to their other commitments. Keeping individual portal drivers engaged in content creation is difficult. Institutions are willing to do this as they have their logo for the content published. It is important to get organizations with similar mandate for content generation. Need to have a core funding for the portal to be up and running. The core funding should cover the cost of junior staff dedicated on the portal for it to be sustainable. About US$ 100,000 per year for a simple gateway and for US$ 500,000 per year for a complex one is required It is important to have a marketing budget for dissemination and reach wider scale. In order to maintain sustainability, portals can take commission, advertisement fee, subscription fee, and donor funding. Potential areas of collaboration with UNDP portal It can integrate youth initiative on Search IB and make specific youth focused search function where Search IB can have specific criteria for searching youth related services. 48

49 They have microsites on the hub, the UNDP portal can be built on the existing infrastructure and flash youth focus listing on the existing directory. It can be decided if youth entrepreneurs need different access routes which can take them to search IB. In case UNDP maintains its own directory Search IB can share the backend data by cobranding. Collaboration of partners at idea level does not require core funding. Engagement of resources specifically for UNDP portal will require funding to cover the costs of the resource. Business Fights Poverty Target entrepreneurs Section A: About the Portal Operating since Business with interest in development 2006 Key Value proposition 3-9 months challenges run by Business Fights Poverty Geographies of operation Global Brief description of service offerings Business Fights Poverty is created and managed by Inspiris, a Founding UK BCorp. It is a global community and informal platform for practitioners and experts that share ideas and interact with their peers. It runs challenges to solve the issues of the organizations. Information (content) creation & updation strategy There are 70 content partners that provide stories for the website. General content partners provide 2 stories per year. Special content partners write on the specific topics related to challenges. Business Fights Poverty is also involved in cross posting of content where only 5% of the content is produced by them and rest is sourced from content partners. Information dissemination strategy Latest insights, trends and practical examples from members and content partners, published every weekday to maintain freshness on the portal. Mentorship approach Challenges The platform collaborates with companies, government player, donors, NGOs, individuals. There are about individual members on the platform. The challenge is run for 3 to 9 months long depending upon the needs. The output of the challenge can be an online event, research, reports, toolkit etc. The aim is to from collaborations. The objective is to take up big issues and breaking it into smaller pieces and solving them. The broad design of the challenge is fixed according to design thinking methods; however, the components of the challenge are not fixed and are based on the objectives and expected outcomes and decided by the funding partner. There are 3 types of challenges: 1. 1st is around solving specific issues that companies are facing and coming up with joint solutions. The output of this is in the form of toolkits and guides. 2. 2nd challenge aims to bring perspectives together and form consensus. The output of this 49

50 challenge could be joint statements, mission statements or a paper. 3. 3rd is an innovation challenge where a product or innovation idea is put to test. The product under the challenge is brought up to a certain level and then handed over to the partner. Currently there are 12 challenges running and the target is to reach 30 challenges over time. Networking approach Conducts in-person and online events, provides opportunities to connect with like-minded people on specific topics. Facilitates online expert panel discussions to explore solutions related to varied challenges. Hosts programmes on different topics ranging from capacity building to awards. Partnership engagement strategy Content partners are sometimes paid to write for the portal but most of it is in non-financial terms. Existing partners Content partners 70 specialized content partners Financing partners Challenges run by different organizations Other partners Anglo American, Barclays, CDC, Cemex, Citi Foundation, Diageo, Pearson, De Beers, Mars, GSK and others. Costs Staffing needs/team Size Other costs Team of 5 people along with one member dedicated in portal management. They also have different challenge directors (12) that are involved in running the challenge. US$ is required for running the challenge. Spent 1mn for the portal in past 10 years Revenues streams / Sustainability Earlier Business Fights Poverty used to provide 3rd party support for managing the portal for Business Call to Action and Business Innovation Facility. They have also white labelled 2 versions of the portal on their own platform. Used to run the portal on membership fees but later on they moved towards specific services and adopted challenges as the model of sustainability. Running a challenge is a low cost model. About US$ is required for running the challenge. There is no prize money involved in the process. Section B: Insights & Recommendations for UNDP Portal Design Key gaps in the youth entrepreneurship ecosystems Regularly updated and relevant content for the young entrepreneurs. Key challenges for African youth entrepreneurs 50

51 Access to Information is one of the key challenges for entrepreneurs in online model. It needs to be regularly updated and requires lot of investment. Leveraging social media It is good to leverage social media but social media does not provide data on the users. The customized solution on the website as a community engagement helps to get more data about the users and access more information. Other insights on strategic considerations for UNDP portal design Business Fights Poverty has two platforms - one of them is an offline face-to-face platform and the other is in the online portal. It is important to have a mix of virtual and a physical network. Focus on one issue at a time. Although donors try and serve all the challenges in the market but it may be so that the market does not need all the solutions. (quote: A gap in the market does not mean there is market in the gap ) Be a lean and minimum viable platform at initial stage. Decide whether you are a cinema or a movie maker. Cinema acts as a channel for aggregating content and movie maker will act as the content creator or as content generator. Business Fights Poverty pivots their model once a year to create stickiness on the portal. It is difficult to create stickiness and mobilize people on the portal. They have only 1000 active members out of members. Other competitive awards run at a cost of GBP and GBP 60,000 is given towards prize money. Impact Hub Target entrepreneurs Section A: About the Portal Operating since Impact businesses 2005 Key Value proposition Co-working, community and incubation support Geographies of operation Global in Africa Ghana, Mali, South Africa, Rwanda, Zimbabwe Brief description of service offerings Impact Hub is a business incubator that provides resources, inspiration, and collaboration opportunities to early stage enterprises. It provides spaces, connections, knowledge, talent, markets, and investment that help enterprises to start their businesses. Information dissemination strategy Publishes newsletters regularly Mentorship approach It organizes programs to build business models and test ideas in a market environment. It offers weekly peer-to-peer meetings, bi-weekly mentoring and access to business experts in the field. At the end of the program enterprises pitch their models to a team of professionals. 51