U.S. – Maghreb Entrepreneurship Conference, Jan 16-18, 2012
The Maghreb Entrepreneurship Conference ended in Marrakech today.The event was organised by US North Africa Partnership for Economic Opportunity (NAPEO), which is part of the global alliance of Partners for a New Beginning (GNP). The United Kingdom NAPEO was the advisory board hosting the conference in coordination with The Aspen Institute, with the support of the US Department of State and the GNP-NAPEO network.
Source : https://www.marocafrik.com/english/U-S-Maghreb-Ent...
It brought together business leaders and entrepreneurs,business leaders of the North African diaspora with US business leaders and young entrepreneurs. Concrete training sessions and workshops with focused partnership and key challenges for advancing entrepreneurship were included.
The conference concentrated on improving access to capital in the Maghreb. This is still one of the major problems faced by those setting up their company for the first time in both Algeria and Morocco. Banks have been reluctant to led money for company start ups but this is now changing and President Bouteflika highlighted a raft of new measures to support young entrepreneurs in his recent budget speech. Similar efforts are being made in Morocco. Now is the right moment to promote cross border partnerships in key sectors as this conference has done. The recent meeting between Algerian Mourad Medelci and his counterpart in Morocco raised hopes of a wider and growing cooperation between the two countries.
The effort to build partnerships with North African entrepreneurs based in the United States is important as their is a very active community of expatriat workers in the US and one only has to look at websites based in the USA to see how active and engaged this community is and its concern for the home country. This is an important resource which is now been galvanised. Business know how and experience gained in the United States is now being put to a creative use. Training and educating young unemployed people and mentoring them is essential and the NAPEO initiative aims to "positively impact" 100,000 young people over the next five years.
The US governement through its embassies encourages student exchange visits and these are bound to have a beneficial effect along with equipping young people with the full panoply of IT skills necessary to deevelop business nationally and internationally. As unemployment rises in the developed as the developing world, policies for job creation and entrepreurial skills are at a premium as is the need to combat longterm unemployment. The high level of unemployment in the age group 18 - 44 in the Maghreb has to be reversed and the NAPEO programme will make an important contribution to this.
Participants called on Tuesday for the creation of a Maghreb-American Council for the Promotion of Investment in the region.
The various speakers during the conference argued that the implementation of a successful partnership between the Maghreb countries is likely to contribute to the creation of a regional market, stressing on the need to adopt policies to encourage young people to create in the various investment sectors.
While stressing the importance of encouraging dialogue and constructive communication between these countries, they urged to give special attention to issues related to scientific research and training expertise at the technical and scientific levels.
Participants also expressed the hope that governments adopt effective policies that promote partnerships between the North African investors to meet the expectations of the peoples of the Maghreb region.
They also noted the need to encourage and support small and medium enterprises account for nearly 90% of the market of partnerships in the Middle East and North Africa and play an important role in the dynamics of development economic and job creation.
The US government will invest $ 4 million to assist entrepreneurship in North Africa, according to the US Embassy in Rabat.
The conference concentrated on improving access to capital in the Maghreb. This is still one of the major problems faced by those setting up their company for the first time in both Algeria and Morocco. Banks have been reluctant to led money for company start ups but this is now changing and President Bouteflika highlighted a raft of new measures to support young entrepreneurs in his recent budget speech. Similar efforts are being made in Morocco. Now is the right moment to promote cross border partnerships in key sectors as this conference has done. The recent meeting between Algerian Mourad Medelci and his counterpart in Morocco raised hopes of a wider and growing cooperation between the two countries.
The effort to build partnerships with North African entrepreneurs based in the United States is important as their is a very active community of expatriat workers in the US and one only has to look at websites based in the USA to see how active and engaged this community is and its concern for the home country. This is an important resource which is now been galvanised. Business know how and experience gained in the United States is now being put to a creative use. Training and educating young unemployed people and mentoring them is essential and the NAPEO initiative aims to "positively impact" 100,000 young people over the next five years.
The US governement through its embassies encourages student exchange visits and these are bound to have a beneficial effect along with equipping young people with the full panoply of IT skills necessary to deevelop business nationally and internationally. As unemployment rises in the developed as the developing world, policies for job creation and entrepreurial skills are at a premium as is the need to combat longterm unemployment. The high level of unemployment in the age group 18 - 44 in the Maghreb has to be reversed and the NAPEO programme will make an important contribution to this.
Participants called on Tuesday for the creation of a Maghreb-American Council for the Promotion of Investment in the region.
The various speakers during the conference argued that the implementation of a successful partnership between the Maghreb countries is likely to contribute to the creation of a regional market, stressing on the need to adopt policies to encourage young people to create in the various investment sectors.
While stressing the importance of encouraging dialogue and constructive communication between these countries, they urged to give special attention to issues related to scientific research and training expertise at the technical and scientific levels.
Participants also expressed the hope that governments adopt effective policies that promote partnerships between the North African investors to meet the expectations of the peoples of the Maghreb region.
They also noted the need to encourage and support small and medium enterprises account for nearly 90% of the market of partnerships in the Middle East and North Africa and play an important role in the dynamics of development economic and job creation.
The US government will invest $ 4 million to assist entrepreneurship in North Africa, according to the US Embassy in Rabat.
Source : https://www.marocafrik.com/english/U-S-Maghreb-Ent...