ENLIEN – ENtrepreneurship and social LINK in Tunisia

Technical assistance and capacity building for the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations of Tunisia to boost the Tunisian entrepreneurship sector

The ENLIEN project is part of the JET initiative (Youth, Entrepreneurship and Digital Technologies in Tunisia) financed by the French Government.

ENLIEN aims to promote and support entrepreneurial initiatives that contribute to fighting against youth unemployment and boosting entrepreneurship, particularly social and women’s entrepreneurship.

Under this project, the Tunisian Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations (CDC) is focusing on strengthening public and private stakeholders in the Tunisian ecosystem nationwide by:

1. Financing five entrepreneurial initiatives,

2. Providing technical assistance to the pilot public incubators of the Agency for the Promotion of Industry and Innovation (APII).

To assist the Tunisian CDC with the development of its activities to support entrepreneurship, Expertise France is helping the institution update its strategy in relation to the recent national strategies and build the skills of the teams responsible for supporting entrepreneurship.

Supporting Tunisian entrepreneurship

The ENLIEN project is financing the programmes of five Tunisian entrepreneurial initiatives – two innovative programmes for social entrepreneurship and women’s entrepreneurship and three structures supporting entrepreneurial initiatives.

Afkar – Incubator of innovative ideas

The Afkar programme aims to support entrepreneurs, civil society stakeholders and media content creators by assisting them throughout the process to implement their project ideas.

El Kahina Citizen Souk – Project for a social and fair trade label in Tunisia

The El Kahina project launched by the NGO Enda Inter Arabe aims to structure a direct chain network for the production and sale of vegetables and food products via three collection platforms and a trading platform especially for women entrepreneurs in the sector. It is the first project for a social and fair trade label in Tunisia.

Start'Act – Acceleration programme for innovative start-ups

This programme consists of three editions jointly led by Wiki Start-up and Carthage Business Angels (CBA), a pioneer in angel investing.

It aims to help innovative start-ups develop their projects.

Tunisia Initiative – Supporting job creation in 5 governorates

The project aims to strengthen the five platforms of the Tunisia Initiative network (Médenine, Gafsa, Sidi Bouzid, Kasserine and Jendouba) to increase their capacity to support entrepreneurs by granting unsecured loans.*

Entreprendre Tunisie network – Supporting and financing start-ups in regions

This project is supporting the creation of SMEs through financing by unsecured loans* and assistance for incubated companies from business leaders.

*Unsecured loans are interest-free personal loans with no real guarantee other than honour.

Helping restructure the network of public incubators

The ENLIEN project is supporting the Tunisian Agency for the Promotion of Industry and Innovation (APII) by building the capacities of pilot public incubators. In 2016, APII launched works to upgrade the national network of 28 public incubators. The objective is to provide project initiators with high-quality assistance and improved services.

In this respect, Expertise France is supporting APII and the Tunisian CDC to:

• Contribute to the development of the medium-term strategy and an action plan,
• Implement a pilot project to support incubators.

The ENLIEN project was officially launched in Tunis in early October 2019.

Find out more on the website of the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations of Tunisia