SPARK’s showcase at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit

This year the seventh edition of the Global Entrepreneurship Summit was held in Silicon Valley and, as president Obama explained in the promotional video: ‘they took the event back to the birthplace of modern entrepreneurship and innovation.’ Previous editions were held in Marrakesh, Kuala Lumpur, Istanbul, and Nairobi.

Participation

This year SPARK was privileged to be invited, not only to attend, but also to share our expertise and knowledge to take part in the global event, which is the largest summit on entrepreneurship annually. SPARK’s own Liberia and Côte d’Ivoire country manager Richard van Hoolwerff was asked to take part in a panel discussing, ‘How to Build a Startup Ecosystem from Scratch in an Emerging Market.’ In this discussion, SPARK shared its view on what is takes to be a successful entrepreneur. As has been proven time and again, an entrepreneur is only one part of the startup success story. Context – where you are an entrepreneur also matters. In this panel the participants discussed the birth, evolution, and scale of entrepreneurial ecosystems worldwide; systems that are poised to yield business unicorns in the next decade. The audience was excited to hear about SPARK’s work in Liberia and was very interested in continuing the discussion in the question & answer panel.

In the run-up to the event there was much interest in the entrepreneurship work in places such as Burundi, Liberia and Côte d’Ivoire which SPARK is supporting. The Tony Elumelu Foundation reached out and, after a productive meeting, preliminary ideas were formed to collaborate in various countries on the African continent. The Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurship Programme (Teep) was impressed with SPARK’s outreach and impact on the ground and saw many great opportunities to collaborate. Particularly through the Business Support Centres which SPARK supports. The Teep programme has an objective to support 10.000 African startups in the coming years which fits well with SPARK’s aims in the region. During the event other introductions were made which could lead to further collaborations in the region to support entrepreneurs, such as the president of the Global Entrepreneurship Network, who would like to build their work in Liberia, where they are not active yet.

Showcasing

SPARK was proud to be in appearance at the GES2016. Not only was our promotional video ‘That was the country that once fought war’ shown during the plenary session on Friday, right before president Obama gave his speech, but also two of our Branson Scholars were invited. Charles Dorme Cooper and Archel Bernard are currently in training to scale up their businesses and were both invited to talk about their experiences. Charles is the founder of cookshop.biz, the most highflying tech startup in Liberia, and Archel is the founder of the Bombchel factory, that recently collected 65000 USD of investment through kickstarter. Archel was even mentioned by secretary of state John Kerry in his opening speech.

All in all, the GES2016 was a great success, and SPARK was presented to a large audience who appreciated the entrepreneurial drive and support which SPARK fosters.