The Ahmedabad-based Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDI) has been tasked by the Centre to set up Africa-India Entrepreneurship Development Centres (AAEDC) in five African countries.

At the recently-concluded Second Africa-India Forum Summit at Addis Ababa, the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, had announced implementation of several projects in Africa, primarily to strengthen partnership with that continent. Among the projects to be implemented, EDI has been assigned by the Ministry of External Affairs the task of setting up Entrepreneurship Development Centres in five African countries, to be identified by EDI in consultation with the Centre and the Association of African Countries, according to an EDI press release here on Wednesday.

Training

These exclusive centres devoted to entrepreneurship development would work towards identifying entrepreneurial potential and aiding development in a way to facilitate setting up of small ventures. This would work to address the needs of a large part of the population which is unable to seek entrepreneurial career due to a variety of constraints such as information asymmetry, knowledge gaps or fear of failure.

These centres will cater to the needs of both start-up entrepreneurs and the existing ones, thereby creating viable and competitive new enterprises and strengthening the existing ones. They will also organise courses for support system like banks and industry promotion agencies, planners and policy-makers to create an enabling environment for establishment of small and medium enterprises, organise trainers' training programmes who could later organise entrepreneurship development programmes for potential entrepreneurs and extend outreach of the programme.

EDI is currently setting up four such centres in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.

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