Private Sector Development

mLabs do more than simply create tech start-ups

Over the last few years, there has been a lot of excitement around the potential impact of digital technologies to solve challenges and create jobs in the developing world. Those championing this strategy for growth and development have turned to young entrepreneurs with wildly imaginative ideas that just might work — if only they had a little business training.

Since 2011, infoDev has been piloting entrepreneurship support programs across the globe and has helped establish a network of mLabs to support digital entrepreneurs. A 2014 assessment report, Do mLabs make a difference? found that these specialized incubators had helped develop nearly a hundred start-ups and created over 280 jobs. Our team returned to the mLabs to conduct a follow-up assessment and uncovered some interesting findings about their impact.

Participants networking at the Global Entrepreneurship Congress in South Africa. © Mutoni Karasanyi/ World Bank

Participants networking at the Global Entrepreneurship Congress. © Mutoni Karasanyi / World Bank

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Babah Salekna El Moustapha, co-fondateur de la Société Mauritanienne pour l'Industrie de Charbon de Typha (SMICT) avec Mohamed et Moctar Abdallahi Kattar. Photo Crédit : Moussa Traoré, HADINA.

« Innovez pour le climat. Travaillez de manière durable. » Ce slogan a lancé l'appel à candidatures de la dernière initiative de soutien à l'entrepreneuriat du Groupe de la Banque mondiale en Mauritanie, le Marathon de l’Entrepreneur – un concours à l' échelle nationale qui permettra d'identifier et d' accompagner une nouvelle génération d'entrepreneurs. Cette compétition est une initiative du Groupe de la Banque mondiale, en partenariat avec le Ministère de l'Economie et des Finances, et avec Hadina RIMTIC qui agit comme véhicule central par lequel le soutien du bailleur et du secteur public peut être transféré aux aspirants entrepreneurs mauritaniens.

Annoncée en avril, la compétition accompagne 21 nouvelles ou jeunes entreprises, leur fournissant des services de formation, d'encadrement et d'autres services d'incubation pour les aider à élaborer un plan d'affaires final et, fondamentalement, à tester les hypothèses qui sous-tendent leurs idées d'entreprise.

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Babah Salekna El Moustapha, co-founder of the project Mauritanian Society for the Typha Coal Industry (SMICT) with Mohamed and Moctar Abdallahi Kattar. Photo Credit: Moussa Traoré, HADINA.

“Innovate for the climate. Work sustainably.” This slogan launched the call for applications to World Bank Group’s latest entrepreneurship support initiative in Mauritania, the Entrepreneur’s Marathon — a country-wide competition to identify and accompany a new generation of entrepreneurs.

This competition is an initiative of the World Bank Group in partnership with the Ministry of the Economy and Finance and Mauritanian incubator Hadina RIMTIC (ICT in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania) acting as the central vehicle through which public and donor support can be channeled into Mauritania’s aspiring entrepreneurs.

The competition is accompanying 21 new or young start-ups and businesses, providing them with training, coaching and other incubation services that will help them develop a final business plan and provide evidence for the hypotheses underpinning their business idea.

The global economy is on the precipice of a Fourth Industrial Revolution – defined by evolving technological trends that have the potential to fundamentally change life for millions of people around the world. Increasingly, technology is connecting the digital world with the physical one, resulting in new innovations such as artificial intelligence and self-driving cars.

Foreign direct investment (FDI) is often considered by economists and policymakers as integral to economic growth – a cornerstone of modernization, income growth and employment.

Yet for many countries, FDI can be elusive, and chasing it can lead policymakers to frustration.

Even economies built by FDI – for example, Singapore – are on this continuous chase, aware that attracting and retaining FDI is not an easy task. They also know that the benefits of FDI do not accrue automatically and evenly across all countries, sectors and local communities.

But first, there must be a realization of the importance of FDI. Singapore – a country once called a “political, economic and geographic absurdity” by its first Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew – never doubted the centrality of FDI, promoting it from the outset of its independence. Singapore saw in FDI an opportunity to develop a substantial industrial base, to create new jobs for its then-poor and low-skilled workforce, and to generate crucial tax revenues for its nascent government to spend on education and infrastructure.

Two decades after that initial strategic acceptance of FDI, Singapore emerged as a newly industrialized economy.

It is little surprise, then, that Singapore’s experience was highlighted at a recent World Bank Group peer-to-peer learning event here in the city-state. Responding to strong demand from client countries, two teams from the Trade & Competitiveness Global Practice – the Investment Policy and Promotion (IPP) team and the Singapore Hub team – co-hosted the learning forum entitled "Promoting Investment Policy and Promotion Reform in Times of Uncertainty."

Supported by SPIRA – the Support Program on Investment Policy and Related Areas – the forum enabled some 80 government officials from East Asia, South Asia and Africa to share their experiences in economic and export diversification; to discuss the role of international trade and investment agreements as leverage toward domestic reforms; and to discuss how to translate investment policy and promotion strategies into measurable results. SPIRA, implemented by the IPP team, supports client countries across all regions in attracting, facilitating and retaining different types of FDI.

Deposit insurance systems (DIS) play a key role in building confidence among depositors and helping keep their money safe. However, deposit insurance should never be considered a "magic bullet," a "quick fix" or a stand-alone solution to maintain financial stability.

The 2008 global financial crisis created a crisis of confidence in banking systems around the world. As a response, the number of countries with deposit insurance systems quickly shot up from 84 (in 2003) to 125 (in 2016). For the existing DIS, this period tested their design and effectiveness.

Over the past decade, the FIRST Initiative has funded 16 projects across the globe to assist in strengthening existing deposit insurance systems or establishing new ones. Drawing from these experiences, we recently published a Lessons Learned Note on the Challenges in Building Effective Deposit Insurance Systems in Developing Countries. The note provides seven lessons learned from our work across the six World Bank regions and provides a number of specific country examples.

The note provides insights to better understand: (1) the role of a DIS, (2) how to design an appropriate framework and (3) keys to effective implementation and operations.

In recent years, Nepal has made the headlines for the wrong reasons. In April 2015, it was shaken by a huge earthquake that claimed thousands of lives and caused country-wide destruction. In previous decades, it suffered political violence and chronic instability.

Yet despite these difficulties, the country rebounded strongly with growth at 7.5 percent in Fiscal Year 2017 and was able to achieve significant progress in business through a series of seemingly modest yet important steps.

Over the course of four years, Nepal’s Ministry of Industry, the country's Office of the Company Registrar (OCR) and IFC’s Investment Climate Team implemented a series of reforms to encourage business registration online. In 2013, a new mandatory online registration service was launched. Help desks in the Kathmandu OCR office, extensive training for business owners, a media campaign, and an enabling legal directive eased the speed and efficiency of the registration process for businesses.

Within a short period of time, almost 100 percent of companies – as opposed to 10 percent during the initial phase of launch – were registered online. Registration became simpler, saving money for both businesses and the government. Online registration also addressed the challenges of the government's limited capacity and poor technology readiness through extensive training and peer-to-peer learning. The processes became more transparent with online file tracking.

In the year following the launch of the online registration system, Nepal’s ranking for "Starting a Business" in the World Bank Group’s 2014 Doing Business Report rose by 6 places. The number of days it took to start a business dropped by 45 percent and led to a 24-percent increase in the number of new companies registered annually.

In Nepal, an employee of the Trade and Export Promotion Centre works on the Nepal Trade Information Portal. The portal, financed under the Nepal-India Regional Trade and Transport Project, provides information that traders need to import and export goods, including information on permits, laws and taxes. Photo Credit: Peter Kapuscinski / The World Bank

These successes produced broader lessons for Nepal and others facing similar challenges. These include:

Make change compulsory, easy and durable. People adapt to new circumstances only if they feel compelled to do so, and only if they fel that the change is not going to disrupt their businesses.
Ensure coordination between government offices in supporting initiatives. There must be "buy-in" from all government agencies involved at all levels. ICT changes must be fully coordinated with business staff.
Nurture trust and cooperation between the WBG and government teams. Study and learn about previous experiences, communicate how the current project will be carried out, and keep talking to partners in government.

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A World Bank Group team set out to answer the questions: Who are Moroccan green entrepreneurs, and what is the entrepreneurial landscape they operate in? They found that:

Almost half of surveyed Moroccan green entrepreneur businesses are solo-run.
84 percent of surveyed entrepreneurs were self-funded at the early-stages.
54 percent of entrepreneurs identified a lack of access to market information as the biggest barrier to doing business in Morocco.

Those are just a few findings from their work on the first World Bank Group climate entrepreneurship ecosystem diagnostic in Morocco, a deep dive into the North African nation’s green start-up ecosystem.

The diagnostic, surveying more than 300 entrepreneurs and industry players, shines unprecedented insight into multiple facets of Morocco’s climate entrepreneurship ecosystem, and how different political, financial, and cultural forces play out to drive the sector.

In a highly visual format, a new report explores the top findings from the diagnostic, bolstering them with case studies, key facts, and graphics. The report uncovers interesting clues to Morocco’s strengths and challenges: Typical Moroccan green entrepreneurs are young, educated, and started their businesses because they wanted to be their own boss. These entrepreneurs work in diverse sectors — from green information technology to energy efficiency — and are creating and adapting technologies and solutions to solve some of Morocco’s greatest environmental challenges.

The president of the Somali Chamber of Commerce, Mohamoud Abdi Ali, joins with the country's Minister of Commerce and Industry, Khadra Ahmed Dualle, at the IFC-sponsored Public-Private Dialogue at the Somalia Conference, which was convened in London in May 2017. The need to increase revenue, growth and trust led to the creation of the Public-Private Dialogue. Photo credit: MPF.

Stabilizing countries that have long been afflicted by fragility, conflict and violence (FCV) – and helping them shape effective reforms to strengthen the investment climate – is one of the most difficult challenges in international development. The task is all the more severe when, as in Somalia, a large proportion of the population has been displaced by violence and natural disaster and when the economy is overly concentrated on a few sectors. Such factors make rebuilding investor confidence a daunting challenge for the newly elected government.

However, despite these challenges, Somalia represents a rare example of private-sector resilience. The major sectors of the economy survived the tumultuous period after the collapse of the state in 1991. Entrepreneurs in Somalia and abroad continue to innovate and adapt in a country void of regulatory frameworks or government oversight. Domestic mobile-money transfers average $1.2 billion in monthly transactions, and mobile money usage is above 70 percent.

Nonetheless, economic growth in Somalia has stagnated and has not resulted in a peace dividend for the population. Government revenue is low – around 2.5 percent of GDP – in an economy driven by consumption, as identified in the World Bank Group’s Somali Economic Update (SEU) from 2016. According to the SEU, two of the biggest obstacles to equitable growth are access to finance and lack of regulations. Moreover, investment in priority sectors is low, held back by protectionism, conflict and instability.

Somalia was the focus of an international conference in May 2017 in London that brought together some of Somalia’s top private-sector firms, development institutions and government leaders to discuss how to jump-start private-sector-led growth and achieve long-term peace and development. Among the distinguished attendees were the newly elected president of Somalia, Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed “Farmaajo”; Prime Minister Teresa May of the United Kingdom; United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres; and the European Union’s foreign-policy chief, Federica Mogherini. The World Bank Group delegation was led by Jan Walliser, the Vice President for Equitable Growth, Finance and Institutions.

With financial inclusion now established as an objective for most financial sector policymakers worldwide, the day-to-day responsibility for ensuring its achievement in a responsible, consumer-friendly, and evidence-based manner often falls to financial sector supervisors. Two challenges are particularly relevant: first, with an increased policy focus on financial inclusion, supervisors are often tasked with adapting reporting systems to collect granular data to monitor financial inclusion and inform policy. For example, how many customers are using each product? Are newly opened accounts active or dormant? What is the rate of growth of agent networks in rural areas?

Second, there is a global trend towards diversifying the range of financial service provider (FSP) types in a given market in order to improve competition and consumer choice, and ultimately financial inclusion. This means that non-bank FSPs such as mobile network operators (MNOs), fintech companies, financial cooperatives and microfinance institutions are increasingly brought under the supervisory mandate of supervisory authorities. This presents a significant challenge for financial sector supervisors who must cover a large and diverse set of FSPs with distinct risk profiles and capacities, stretching their already limited resources. Collecting and analyzing accurate, relevant, and timely information from these providers is at the heart of this supervisory challenge.

Many financial sector supervisors are seeking technology-enabled solutions to address these challenges, an approach known to some as “suptech” (i.e. supervision technology). The National Bank of Rwanda (BNR) provides a case in point.

mLabs do more than simply create tech start-ups

L'entrepreneuriat demande de l’endurance: Comment un incubateur mauritanien appuie les entrepreneurs en herbe avec son concours « Marathon de l’Entrepreneur »

Entrepreneurship takes stamina: How Mauritania is supporting budding entrepreneurs

The Future of Jobs and the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Business as Usual for Unusual Business

Encouraging investment policy and promotion reform in times of uncertainty

Building deposit insurance systems in developing countries

Nepal: Modest beginnings, big rewards

Mapping Morocco’s green entrepreneurship ecosystem

Helping Somalia attract private investment will require realism, rigor and reforms

Leveraging ‘suptech’ for financial inclusion in Rwanda

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