Horizon 2020 Project Officially Kicks Off
ENRICH in AFRICA: Horizon 2020 project officially kicks off activities to create a new EU-Africa network, upgrading capacity for European and African innovation actors
The European Commission has granted EUR 3.5 million to ENRICH in Africa (EiA), a three-year Horizon 2020 project to create a network that strengthens and connects the EU and Africa innovation ecosystems. Building on the work and the numerous established tech hub linkages of the Africa Europe Innovation Partnership (AEIP), EiA will provide a wide variety of programmes, activities and services for entrepreneurs and the incubators and accelerators supporting them, across both continents. Activities successfully kicked off in an online meeting at the beginning of the year.
This exciting new project brings together a consortium of key stakeholders from the innovation landscape of Europe and Africa who are already supporting the needs for capacity development across the innovation value chain in both regions. Their common goal is to build a network of incubators and accelerators in order to raise the capacity for the delivery of quality services for European and African innovators, as well as reduce the barriers to internationalisation that currently exist. To maximise this potential, the project is working alongside sister projects within the existing ENRICH network, covering the USA, Latin America and China.
As part of the wider EU-Africa cooperation efforts, EiA is in line with the Commissions' goal to stimulate inter-continental cooperation and further develop the EU-African innovation community. Through its activities, the project addresses three of the five EU-Africa Partnership topics proposed by the EC for the 2021-2040 period based on the Joint-Africa-EU Strategy: Green Transition and Energy Access, Digital Transformation, Sustainable Growth and Jobs.
As part of the wider EU-Africa cooperation efforts, the ENRICH in Africa project supports the strategic dialogue between Europe and Africa in innovation and builds on the successes of previous EU-funded Africa-EU innovation initiatives. By continuing their legacy in the African-European innovation cooperation area as well as deepening the links between the innovation stakeholder communities, the project will contribute to the soon to be established EU-Africa strategic partnerships in areas such as green transition & energy access, digital transformation and sustainable growth & jobs.
Like AEIP, EiA places a strong emphasis on contributing to the UN Sustainable Development Goals with a particular focus on SDG 9 - Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, SDG 5 – Gender Equality, SDG 8 Decent Work and Economic Growth as well as SDG 17 Partnership for the Goals. It will build on AEIP’s work in supporting EU-Africa technology transfer and commercialisation, scale-up of innovators on both continents and has capacity upgrading for innovation actors at its centre, drawing on important learnings from this preceding initiative.