🇸🇳 Creation of a one-stop shop for the diaspora to promote productive investment in Senegal.
Context
The collaboration between MEET Africa 2 and Senegalese partners between 2022 and 2024 has identified several urgent needs of diaspora entrepreneurs:
- Access to information on available opportunities, as well as economic and sector-specific information. Referrals to permanent programs with reactive follow-up.
- Technical support from design to implementation of their projects.
- Financial support for project start-ups and the provision of guarantees.
- Mobility on the double space and assistance with setting up.
- Ease of access to administrations via online procedures.
- Networking with other inspiring or complementary entrepreneurs.
- Need to structure, test and optimize their ideas and business models.
- Need access to acceleration programs.
Faced with the demands of entrepreneurs, Senegalese public and private partners have joined forces to imagine and design a one-stop online shop for entrepreneurs from the Senegalese diaspora.
This web platform, which is intended to become the main channel of communication and follow-up for the Senegalese expatriate community, brings together all the information needed to guide, formalize and provide technical and financial support for diaspora entrepreneurs in Senegal.
MEET Africa 2 and DGASE have signed (in 2022) a technical assistance memorandum of understanding to set up an interactive online one-stop-shop tool for entrepreneurs from the Senegalese diaspora, thus kick-starting this structuring project that Senegal has appropriated at the highest level of government to turn into a strategic lever.
The one-stop shop
This one-stop shop presents the institutional offer, the legislative and regulatory framework, practical information sheets, and offers a catalog of E-Services for the diaspora, as well as a Skills module for sourcing and connecting technical and human skills in Senegal. It also collects data on diaspora entrepreneurship, to support the development of structural policies to promote diaspora entrepreneurship in Senegal.
This tool, which will go online in 2024, will enable entrepreneurs in the diaspora toaccess sector-specific information and the many opportunities for technical and financial support in Senegal, as well as to set up their businesses from abroad (in collaboration with MAESE).
It will also highlight the technical and financial support available in Senegal for the development of entrepreneurial projects.
One-stop shop implementation partners
DIRECTION GÉNÉRALE D'APPUI AUX SÉNÉGALAIS DE L'EXTÉRIEUR - DGASE
https://www.diplomatie.gouv.sn/directions/dgase
DGASE is the lead agency for diaspora engagement within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Senegalese Abroad, and works to develop diaspora engagement policies and programs. It comprises two directorates, the Direction de l'Assistance et de la Promotion des Sénégalais de l'extérieur (DAPSE), which focuses on diaspora engagement and diaspora welfare, and the Direction de l'Appui à l'Investissement et aux Projets (DAIP) focused on supporting and attracting diaspora investments and businesses.
L'AGENCE DE DÉVELOPPEMENT ET D'ENCADREMENT DES PETITES ET MOYENNES ENTREPRISES - ADEPME https://adepme.sn
Created in 2001, ADEPME's mission is to increase the density of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs); to assist and support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), as well as micro-businesses that request assistance or benefit from government loans; and to boost the competitiveness of SMEs.
L'AGENCE DE PROMOTION DES INVESTISSEMENTS - APIX https://investinsenegal.sn
Created in 2000, APIX has positioned itself as a catalyst in the development of structuring infrastructures, with a view to guaranteeing the profitability of all productive investments in Senegal. In particular, APIX is home to the Bureau de Création d'Entreprise (BCE), a business start-up office that provides access to all the opportunities offered by the investment code. APIX also provides a portal for sectoral and economic information on Senegal.
LA DÉLÉGATION GÉNÉRALE À L'ENTREPRENARIAT RAPIDE DES FEMMES ET
DES JEUNES - DER https://www.der.sn/
DER/FJ is a structure attached to the General Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic of Senegal. It was created in 2017 and has the following missions: defining and implementing strategies to promote self-employment for young people and women; mobilizing resources and financing business start-up projects and income-generating activities; building the technical and managerial capacities of beneficiaries; supervising and monitoring-evaluating financed projects and activities.
In the press...
https://aps.sn/un-guichet-unique-de-la-diaspora-pour-promouvoir-linvestissement-productif/
