Qawafel - Project to Support the Internationalisation of Tunisian Start-ups and SMEs in Africa

The rapidly changing global economy offers new business opportunities. Markets in Africa are booming, especially in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DCR), Kenya, Mauritania and Senegal.

The Qawafel project aims to take advantage of these opportunities by assisting Tunisian companies with their expansion, and helping to strengthen economic and commercial ties between these emerging African markets.

The Qawafel project will assist Tunisian companies during their start-up phase and/or help them develop their exports in the four priority countries. It will thereby increase their business volumes and competitiveness.

It will target stakeholders in the Tunisian ecosystem of internationalisation, including:

• Operators providing support to the public and private sectors, including public operators, regional and local authorities, competitiveness clusters, the support networks of associations and professionals, incubators and accelerators
• The State and actors responsible for the definition of strategies and public policies
• Finance actors, including private banks, public banks, guarantee societies, insurance companies, private investors, private equity firms and seed investors
• Companies of all sizes and types 

The agency MAZAM has developed a mapping of this ecosystem, with support from the Qawafel project. It provides a strategic tool for Tunisian SMEs and start-ups seeking to develop internationally, through a comprehensive overview of the key stakeholders in internationalisation in Tunisia.

The Qawafel project is based on three strategic areas.

1. Support for the internationalisation of Tunisian companies in Africa

Through the project, the business support centres will develop their range of services and improve their structure, performance and sustainability. This will build the competitiveness of Tunisian SMEs. The activities implemented are as follows:

• Financial and technical assistance for intermediate structures that support companies seeking to develop internationally on African markets 
• Organisation of capacity building, upgrading and promotion activities for Tunisian start-ups and companies that will develop internationally in the priority countries
• Implementation of a technical assistance programme for support structures to ensure the sustainability of their support systems and range of services

2. Visibility and economic diplomacy of Tunisia on emerging African markets

Tunisia will initiate an active economic diplomacy and its visibility will be strengthened in the priority countries:

• Support for the operationalisation of Tunisia’s economic diplomacy strategy towards the four priority countries
• Support for skills development for advisers in economic diplomacy
• Promotion of Tunisian know-how in the four target countries

3. Enabling regulatory and institutional framework 

The Qawafel project will help ensure that there is a more enabling institutional framework and revise certain regulations to facilitate the internationalisation of Tunisian start-ups and companies:

• Creation of a technical assistance facility for public stakeholders to improve Tunisia’s cross-sectoral and/or sectoral institutional and regulatory framework 
• Support for the establishment of regional peer-to-peer mechanisms for dialogue and collaboration (Tunisia/target countries)
• Operationalisation of the digital platform for export support