The African Development Bank, through its entrepreneurship support initiative for North Africa, EInA (Entrepreneurship, Innovations and Advice), held a regional technical workshop on operational innovations to be adopted by countries in Cairo from 12 - 13 February 2024, to optimise the design of public support programmes for entrepreneurship and micro, small and medium-sized businesses (MSMEs).

Co-funded by the British embassy, the workshop was attended by delegations from the Ministries of Employment, Finance, the Economy and Planning, of Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia as well as representatives of donors, the private sector, the academic world and international experts.

The three countries agreed on the significant gains that could be made in terms of high-quality jobs through promoting entrepreneurship and the development of MSMEs. As well as adopting operational innovations, they highlighted the importance of cooperation and sharing experiences, rigorous impact assessments and the cost-benefit ratios of the various programmes, public-private partnerships and coordinating the activities of development partners. Based on this, several opportunities in terms of technical assistance and institutional capacity-building with the support of EInA were identified.

For Rania A. Al-Mashat, the Egyptian Minister of International Cooperation, the organisation of this workshop confirmed that the establishment of the EInA initiative was an important step in the development of innovative entrepreneurship policies and programmes in North Africa.

Malinne Blomberg, Deputy Director General of the African Development Bank for North Africa, confirmed the importance of partnerships in implementing operational innovations developed by EInA. She thanked the Tunisian authorities for offering to host the next EInA meeting on operational innovations.

The technical workshop in Egypt offered an opportunity for reflection and sharing experiences to develop an approach aimed at facilitating the countries' adoption of innovations from the Rabat Declaration:

• Entrepreneur profile surveys as a diagnostic tool to underpin the design of public policies and programmes that support entrepreneurs and MSMEs.
• The outline of a regulatory framework to help MSMEs to integrate into the formal sector.
• Impact investing funds for entrepreneurship and employment to drive private investments towards value chains and create commercial and funding opportunities for new micro and small businesses.

The workshop was held as part of the signature of the Rabat Declaration, a political manifesto prepared by the three North African countries and several development partners during the regional conference organized in June 2022 on the theme of: "The future of labour and the role of entrepreneurship and MSMEs". The Rabat Declaration identifies the problems shared by existing programmes to support entrepreneurship and MSMEs, as well as seven operational innovations to adopt in order to resolve them.

The EInA initiative was launched in 2020 with the support of the African Development Bank and bilateral partners to design and promote operational innovations to drive programmes and policies aimed at supporting entrepreneurship.