The Government of Sierra Leone and the World Bank are implementing the Sierra Leone Economic Diversification Project (SLEDP). The Project Development Objective (PDO) is to increase investment and growth of small and medium enterprises in non-mining productive sectors. The project will do so by strengthening the business enabling environment, facilitating strategic public investments to improve competitiveness and investments, supporting SMEs and entrepreneurs, and building the capacity of public institutions and private sector operators.

Component 2 of the Project aims to facilitate SME growth and stimulate entrepreneurship in high-growth productive sectors by addressing critical firm-level and sector-level constraints including (i) low access to information (ii) poor last-mile infrastructure (ii) limited access to finance, (iii) weak capacity to scale businesses. Specific activities in this component to address these challenges include public goods investment, SME acceleration, and early-stage financing. In line with its PDO, the Project recognized that business incubation and acceleration programs are critical services needed in supporting the growth process of start-ups and SMEs and studies show that the survival rate for incubated companies is higher than that of other companies. Incubation and acceleration of business have proven to maximise the innovation potential of SMEs and help them build the needed connections and collaborations to thrive.

In this context, the Project together with SMEDA are starting their support to improving the SME ecosystem and support business resilience in Sierra Leone by launching this call for application through Creative Hub Africa for SMEs in the Creative industries and Circular Economy (including waste management and Green Industries) sectors to be accelerated in the programme

A total of 20 SMEs in the sectors highlighted earlier are to be supported through the program across the country. Women owned and managed businesses are particularly encouraged to apply.