Some players in the startup space have resounded the importance of a cohesive and strong ecosystem to drive growth, address unemployment issues, and make a significant economic contribution.
While acknowledging the ecosystem’s continuous growth, they contend that stakeholders continue to work in silos, and this could hinder the transformation, drive, and expansion of the space need to scale up.
They believed a change in the narrative will stimulate the development of the many emerging startups and allow the already existing innovation hubs to be properly nurtured and harnessed.
Also, a well-positioned startup ecosystem will considerably support efforts to move the economy into the next stage.
Speaking at the Ghana Startup Stakeholders Assembly in Accra, National Project Coordinator for the Netherlands Trust Fund V Project at International Trade Centre, Isaac Newton Acquah said though stakeholders in the ecosystem are very connected to each other in many ways, they continued to work in silos which is not encouraging.
Growth
He noted that over the years, the startup ecosystem has experienced steady and promising growth, and a survey dubbed ‘the state of the ecosystem’ in 2022 shows that there has been an increasing number of hubs being set up.
Findings also revealed that there has been an increasing number of ecosystem actors acting as enablers and several startups building market-driven products with others expanding to other countries while pursuing growth through mergers and acquisitions.
Association of Ghana Start-ups
The Ghana Stakeholders Assembly seeks to create a platform that brings on board stakeholders and every player in the startup space to have a multilevel dialogue on how to collaborate and innovate to create sustainable jobs for youths and assist startups to become globally competitive.
The event also saw the unveiling of interim executives of the yet-to-be-launched Association of Ghana Start-ups (AGS), earlier known as the Ghana Start-up Network, and the launch of the Start-up Echo Magazine to showcase achievements in the space.
“This will create a platform that will showcase start-ups and the players and what they are doing. And talking about visibility, this is going to consolidate all the gains in every. We will publish and distribute it free of charge in both digital and hard copy,” Team Lead of the Association, Solomon Adjei told the B&FT.
He reiterated that the new executives will create a central data system on the start-up ecosystem and leverage it to drive development and inform progress.
“Data is key and that is one of the key things that we are doing. We want to know who is a start-up in the country and where they are you located. And also, if you are a developing partner what do you have to offer? We are going to create central data system for the start-up ecosystem,” Mr. Adjei added.
