The Alliance for Entrepreneurship in Africa held its first stand-alone event in Cairo that welcomed Alliance members, their partners, and MSMEs to discuss how to enhance the startup ecosystem. This event, which an Alliance member organized by EBRD, leveraging its Star Venture program, aimed to bring the necessary resources and expertise to foster collaboration around the theme of how the Alliance can better support startups.

Roundtables were held to discuss the key barriers and opportunities to better support MSME startups from regulatory access to finance and markets with a comprehensive evaluation of what is required throughout the MSME ecosystem to provide more demand solutions versus supply-driven solutions. With this meeting, participants discussed how to join forces to support startups from the region better and are leveraging the outcomes to develop projects and attract members into the Alliance to support startups in Africa better.