Welcome to ‘The Startup State’ - a weekly bulletin from the GEN Policy and Research team highlighting key entrepreneurship news, reports, commentary and features from around the world.
News
- The Victoria State Government in Australia plans to wind down the well-regarded startup support agency LaunchVic as part of broader cost-saving measures. LaunchVic's grant and support programs will move into Invest Victoria while its equity investments will transfer to Breakthrough Victoria (SmartCompany)
- Turkiye has laid out an ambitious national strategy to foster 100,000 tech startups and achieve a combined $100bn valuation for it's "turcorns" by 2030 (YeniSafak)
- Tunisia has scrapped a 50-year-old rule banning Tunisian residents from owning foreign currency bank accounts in an effort to retain tech talent and startups (Launch Base Africa)
- Senegal has approved a $145m 2026 budget for the Ministry of Communications, Telecommunications and Digital, of which 60% is earmarked for investment. This forms part of a wider strategy under which the digital economy aims to contribute 15% of GDP by 2034 (Tech News Africa)
- Syria has partnered with Visa to build a future-ready payments ecosystem and integrate into the global digital economy (Zawya)
Research and publications
- Opening entrepreneurial ecosystem black boxes (Erik Stam, Christina Theodoraki, Niels Bosma, Didier Chabaud & Gregory Gueneau)
- Do institutions matter for entrepreneurship? (Kun Fu, Donghyun Park, Erkoo Autio & Shu Tian)
- Power plays: Surfacing the hidden currents in entrepreneurial ecosystems (Judith Terstriep, Alexandra David, Lukas Zaghow, Natalia Vershinina & Jorg Freiling)
- The power of together: The role of ecosystems in enabling fintech growth across sub-Suharan Africa (EY | Summary)
- Rethinking venture capital for the African market (Alyune Diop, Diego Arias Garcia, Desiree Pettersson & Kartik Sharma)
Comment and analysis
- With LaunchVic vanishing after 10 years, Melbourne's innovation moment is now or whatever (George Hedon, founder & creative director, Pause Fest)
- The aid economy's entrepreneurship mirage (Kevin Mofekeng, contributor, African Arguments)
- Innovation doesn't equal productivity, and patents don't always represent innovation (Robert D Atkinson, president, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation)
- Innovation beyond borders: How MENA diaspora entrepreneurs are reshaping systems (Malak El-Boury, researcher, FGSES-UM6P)
- Why EU innovation policy fails to promote disruptive innovation (Clemens Fuest, Daniel Gros, Philipp-Leo Mengel, Giorgia President, Cristina Rujan, academics and VoxEu contributors)
- The AI divide is growing: Why the future of youth entrepreneurship rests on a knife edge (Dejan Markovic, head of innovation, Youth Business International)
- Why startup ecosystems fail at scale: The economic development playbook for capacity building (Paul O'Brien, author, Startup Economist)
- Will open banking unlock Nigeria's hidden economic potential? (Dulue Mbachu, writer, African Business)
- (Indian) Startups filed thousands of patents to impress investors, then let them die (Anuj Suvarna, writer, Your Story)
Features
- El Salvador strengthens role as a regional innovation hub at GET Forum 20205 with IDB support (IDB)
- African startups take centre stage at African Startup Conference in Algiers (African Business)
- Senegal's digital leap (African Business)
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The opinions expressed in the articles above are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of the Global Entrepreneurship Network.