A stakeholder co-construction workshop on improving innovation support (PSI) for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Senegal was held last week in Dakar. It served as a pretext to publish the results of the survey on support for innovation.
“Our results showed that companies which benefited from these support programs achieved turnover which increased by up to 10%, unlike companies which did not benefit from them, where the The result is lower with a rate of 5%,” informed Djibril Diallo, research economist. According to the Ipar project coordinator, “also in terms of job creation, companies which benefited from this support for innovation had to create permanent jobs in the period 2021-2023 by 15%, unlike to those who have not benefited from these programs where the result found in terms of job creation in the period 2021-2023 is only 8%.
The results of this survey also revealed insufficiencies regarding female entrepreneurship. “Regarding the issue of female entrepreneurship, there was noted a significant number of businesses managed by women in the start-up phases. When you start businesses, women are there. They represent 35%, while in the maturity phase, we see that the representation rate of companies run by women is very low. This shows that these are questions that deserve to be asked to guide support policies for these women. Because when their businesses reach the growth phase, they decline. There is also the question of financing. It still poses a problem within the framework of these policies. We found that the company financing rate was 7%, which is very low compared to the size of the companies,” notes the expert. Which also highlights the issue of inclusion. He notes that “the rate of people with disabilities benefiting from these programs is quite low. It is 6%. We found that in terms of inclusion, there are steps to be taken in this direction so that the programs can take into account all categories of businesses.
According to him, “these results showed that innovation support programs enable companies to achieve economic and financial performance in terms of turnover”.
This, he continues, shows that the impact is there and is positive for these jobs. Which leads him to say that they have found results which will allow them to create a road map and make recommendations available to political decision-makers and ecosystem players that will enable them to better target the plans. intervention aimed at innovation, but also to make them more effective to allow these companies to evolve in a resilient and productive environment. He also recommends finding ways to improve these programs by supporting women.
By Justin GOMIS – [email protected]
Senegal
