WIDU.africa is now available in two new countries in Europe. From now on, people from the African diaspora in Belgium and Denmark can also register and support micro and small businesses (MSME’s) of friends and relatives from Ethiopia, Cameroon, Kenya, Ghana, Togo and Tunisia
New European partner countries in order to reach more entrepreneurs in Africa
With the two new European partner countries, WIDU is now available in a total of nine European countries. In addition to Denmark and Belgium, participation is still possible for interested parties from Germany, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Austria, Sweden and Switzerland. By offering WIDU in more European countries, the project aims to enable more people to participate.
WIDU.africa – the idea behind the project and how it works
WIDU.africa offers private individuals from the African diaspora in Europe the opportunity to financially support micro-enterprises from all sectors in the participating African countries. The idea behind the project: diaspora private investments are to be made available to MSMEs as financial funding.
If diaspora donor and entrepreneur join forces and invest private funds in the micro or small business, WIDU doubles this amount and pays it out to the entrepreneur as a grant. Find out more about the benefits of this partnership and how our programme works in detail: https://widu.africa/learn-how-widu-works
More than 11,000 jobs created in Africa – thanks to an approach developed together with the African diaspora
The WIDU.africa project of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH has already been running for five years and is active in six African countries. The project is funded by the German Development Ministry. During this time, WIDU has supported more than 5,500 micro and small enterprises (MSMEs) in Africa. With the help of financial support from friends and family members and the project, over 11,000 jobs have been created and maintained since then. In addition to private investments and grants, all participating companies receive customised business coaching. Since 2019, WIDU partner organisations in the six African partner countries have held almost 12,000 coaching sessions. What is special about the project is that the approach of offering MSME diaspora remittances as business financing was developed together with representatives of the African diaspora. To date, WIDU has already been able to provide African MSMEs with private investments totalling 8.1 million euros.