Tunisian Entrepreneurs Reveal Post-Revolution Challenges at Wamda Tunis Meetup
In partnership with the Global Shapers Tunis
Hub, Wamda made its debut in Tunis a couple of weeks ago by
organizing a meet and greet with Tunisian entrepreneurs. We were
hosted by the local Lebanese restaurant, Comptoirs de Beyrouth-
also a Tunisian startup- who welcomed us with great food and drink,
creating the perfect atmosphere for exchange.
Around a dozen innovative startups in media, ICT, biotechnology and
renewable energy came to the event, most discovering Wamda for the
first time. While the Middle East often feels distant from our
reality in North Africa, Tunisian entrepreneurs could benefit
greatly from learning from other entrepreneurs throughout the
entire MENA region. For the first time, Tunisians are straying from
their traditional European and Francophone partners and opening up
to the Middle East and the U.S. for business. It’s an exciting new
era, but entrepreneurs are also still adapting and in need of
advice.
Tunisian entrepreneurs are also constrained by an underdeveloped
entrepreneurial ecosystem and a limited local market.
Interestingly, what we heard from many of them at the Wamda dinner
is that their biggest challenge is not the inaccessibility of
finance but the unbelievable delays they face actually receiving
their money, as well as subsequent limits on their
spending.
This applies especially to those who benefit from public financial
instruments and La Banque de Financement des PME (BFPME), the
publically funded bank created to boost small medium enterprises.
As a result, an entrepreneur spends 90% of his or her time chasing
after their money through a bureaucratic maze of paperwork, rather
than building a prototype our seeking out their first client. It is
clear that innovative startups suffer from a lack of financing
sources that are flexible enough to let them remain competitive.
Innovation is also time bound; if it takes two extra years to start
up because your money is blocked at the bank, chances are someone
will have already beat you to the punch.
This leads me to another obstacle. Many entrepreneurs are hesitant
to expose their new ideas for fear that they will be stolen. The
local intellectual property office (INNORPI) provides limited
protection, but the patents it issues are only local and done
without any evaluation of competitors in the market. This is also a
legacy of the Ben Ali regime, which was known to deny projects
funding or support and then put the ideas on the market itself. As
a result there is a pervasive lack of trust that tends to dampen
the entrepreneurial spirit.
This is starting to change, slowly, with the explosion of
initiatives in Tunisia, since the revolution, that encourage
entrepreneurs to meet and share their ideas, their challenges and
their successes. Entrepreneurs are also learning to accept advice
from those who have gone before them. Still, many entrepreneurs are
waiting to see concrete results come from these initiatives, such
as real investment, exposure, and solid advice.
We in Tunis look forward to the next event to push this exchange
further; to bring together those starting their business with
mentors from around the region. Little by little, we will start to
connect the “ME-NA” regional ecosystem of entrepreneurship.