30 participants representing West African training institutions and Business Support Organizations (BSOs) attended a regional online training workshop focusing on regional and international best practices for the provision and delivery of entrepreneurship training. The training workshop, which was delivered by UNIDO from 14-17 November 2022, aimed to contribute to the implementation of the ECOWAS MSME Strategy and MSME Charter.

This regional training workshop followed a Training of Trainers (ToT) that was successfully delivered to the same training institutions and BSOs in 2020 and 2021 with the support of UNIDO and the International Training Center of ILO on the “Start and Improve Your Business” (SIYB) module. This ToT initially led to certification of 32 West African trainers in SIYB, who trained almost 500 West African entrepreneurs on a pilot basis on how to start and improve their businesses.

In that context, the training was another step forward towards the objective of equipping the selected national institutions with relevant knowledge and skills for designing and implementing strategies in the area of entrepreneurship training, thus ensuring the efficiency and sustainability of services proposed to national entrepreneurs. It also created excellent opportunities of networking between the different participants who shared during the 4-day session their experiences, best practices and ideas on several topics such as business incubators and accelerators, access to finance, digitalization or gender issues.