ASSEK has entered into a partnership agreement with Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), on a project termed as the ESO Digitization Project. The project began in November 2021.
We officially launched the ESO Mapping Exercise on the 29th of March 2022. The first phase of this project has seen the Association through an external Consultant CediA Africa, carry out stakeholder meetings in Kisumu, Coastal Region, Nakuru Region and Nairobi Region. Afterwhich the needs assessment exercise was done by different hub representatives participating in a survey.
Project Objectives
The project objective is to build the capacity of member organizations to be able to deliver services to entrepreneurs within their network so as to be able to close the gaps on access to knowledge , access to investors and access to market through digitization of their processes in light of the COVID 19 pandemic.
10 month project to ‘Building Startups Post-COVID 19 Resilience by Investing in ESOs in Kenya’.
The key projects areas of support include:
- Mapping of the Kenyan ESOs needs and gaps to start, run and manage a sustainable hub
- Roll out capacity building workshops / masterclass to close the identified gaps and challenges
- Support in the digitization of their processes to ensure they can increase their growth and impact.
- Develop a knowledge base for the best practices in digitization that other ESOs outside of the ASSEK network can implement
AGRIJOBS
Drawing from a report conducted by Briter Bridges and Tectona Group titled the Analysis of Western Kenya’s agri-food entrepreneurship ecosystem and development of a holistic strategy to strengthen the ecosystem’s support to rural entrepreneurs within the agri-food sector in Western Kenya, ASSEK together with other collaborators like Lake hub, Association of Countrywide Hubs and Lake Region Economic Bloc(LREB) have joined efforts to implement theAgrijobs Project.
Project Objectives
- Driving policy discussions between ESOs and government on the business environment in the agri-food sector
- Institutional strengthening and capacity building while developing standards/code of conduct and good practices for incubation and acceleration programs in the Western ecosystem
- Overseeing ESOs innovation business hackathon(s) and incubating winning ideas through the Hackathons