Although the entrepreneurship community in Ghana is growing, angel investors, venture capitalists, government, incubators, and accelerators seldom have the opportunity to come together to grapple with challenges. For instance, there are opportunities to explore how to train young people in new business model areas (e.g. hybrid models) that support the development of regional economies and propose solutions to create vibrant entrepreneurship ecosystems. To address this challenge, Ashesi University and MIT D-Lab will be hosting yearly NEXTi2i Ecosystem Convening.
For this event, we bring together stakeholders — such as entrepreneurs, educators, incubator managers, investors, channel partners, policy makers, and CSOs to name a few, — into a working group. The group will experience a design workshop methodology that will enable collective action towards improving entrepreneurship training and transformational business building approaches to inspire young Ghanaian entrepreneurs. Thought leaders from Ashesi, MIT, USAID and other partners will also be in attendance.
Since the format of this event will lead to actual ecosystem solution concepts, the solutions developed by the group on this year’s theme of unlocking potential will be implemented over the course of the next twelve months, culminating in the 2020 NEXTi2i convening which will enable stakeholders to continue to contribute, as members of the groups, in ways that will eventually transform Ghana.
N/B: Even though the COVID-19 pandemic has caused the convening to be on hold, it has definitely not crippled our activities. Check out the amazing work of our 2020 AVI Fellows here https://www.nexti2i.com/2020-fellows/
