A Resilient Africa 2020 - An AfriLabs Impact Report

Rollo Africa

Supporting small businesses in Africa through the pandemic while equipping the ecosystem with knowledge for the future

African Entrepreneurship Ecosystem and African Small and Micro businesses have grown fast in the last decade in many industries. However, the support system models for small businesses have been always inspired and developed from outside the continent like coworking spaces, incubators, hackathons, and accelerators which normally address and fit only formal businesses that have a different level of maturity, different macro and micro-economics and different market outlooks and different investments needs. African informal businesses need a new model that respects the local context, level of maturity, background and local education, growth of a business, and response to local risk and crises. This was clear when the Covid-19 pandemic hit Small African Businesses. Supported by AfriLabs, UNDP and the African Union, Rollo is a business simulation program dedicated to inspiring and supporting small African enterprises facing challenges after the COVID-19 outbreak. It is composed of three intensive simulation days in which enterprises learn to manage and operate in a competitive environment within different market outlooks. In conjunction with selected AfriLabs member hubs (JokkoLabs, ActivSpaces, Kmt House, Savannah and izone hub), we started with bootcamps in 5 different African Countries namely: Cameroon, Egypt, Senegal, Sudan and Zimbabwe.

Each bootcamp is composed of 20 participants divided into 5 teams. Each team is made up of 4 entrepreneurs who work together for 3 intensive days and share best practices and knowledge in a specific industry like retail, service, hospitality, manufacturing..etc. Participants will take virtual business decisions in Strategy, Marketing, Pricing, Sales, Operations and analyze their market shares, profitabilities and revenues based on their decisions, market outlooks and their competitor’s behaviours. As at the time of writing this report, these boot camps are still ongoing in various countries.