The Entrepreneurship Policy Making Process

Welcome to your course on The Entrepreneurship Policy Making Process!

This course is designed for government officials, policymakers, and ecosystem leaders who want to build entrepreneurship and innovation policy that actually works on the ground. Most entrepreneurship policies fail not because the idea was wrong, but because they were written for entrepreneurs rather than with them, then launched once and left untouched as reality moved on. A participatory, iterative approach flips that around. It brings the people a policy affects into every phase, tests ideas against local conditions before they are locked in, and treats each reform as a cycle that learns from the last.

The curriculum walks you through the ADDIS process, a five-phase method for making policy with stakeholders, covering Agenda-Setting, Drafting, Decision-Making, Implementation, and Sense-Making. Each phase is grounded in real African Startup Act cases from Nigeria, Senegal, Zambia, the DRC, and Tunisia, so you see how the method holds up against the messy realities of adoption, delivery, and evaluation. You will move from surfacing the right problems with the right people, through turning ideas into co-created proposals, to choosing transparently, delivering with real indicators, and closing the loop so learning feeds the next round.

By mastering these concepts, you will be equipped to run each ADDIS phase with confidence, judge where a borrowed policy needs local adaptation, and design a concrete, participatory policy process for a reform in your own context.

Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to:

• Explain the five phases of the ADDIS process and the specific contribution each one makes to sound entrepreneurship policy.
• Apply participatory methods to surface, prioritise, and co-create policy proposals with the entrepreneurs and stakeholders a reform affects.
• Evaluate real African Startup Act cases to judge when a borrowed policy needs adaptation and what makes implementation and monitoring succeed.
• Design a concrete, iterative ADDIS process for a reform in your own ecosystem, complete with indicators and review points.

Who is this course for?

This course is designed for government officials, policymakers, and ecosystem leaders across Africa. It is highly beneficial for individuals who are:

• Responsible for entrepreneurship, innovation, or small-business policy, strategy, and legislation.
• Working in agencies, hubs, or associations that shape or deliver support for startups and entrepreneurs.
• Advising on or coordinating reforms such as a Startup Act, and seeking a repeatable, participatory method.