About GEN Ethiopia

The Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN) began its work in Ethiopia in 2011, when the country joined Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) for the first time. That inaugural campaign was led by Empact Capital and reached 1,200 participants through 13 activities organized with 12 partners. The arrival of GEW resonated quickly at the highest levels of government – then-President Girma Wolde-Giorgis welcomed the celebration, noting that entrepreneurship could serve not only as a path to self-employment and financial independence but also as a vehicle for job creation and the country’s broader economic transformation. 

Momentum built rapidly. By 2012, the Empact Capital-led campaign had grown to 1,650 participants, and in 2013 the Ethiopian government formalized its commitment by establishing the Entrepreneurship Development Center (EDC) under the Ministry of Urban Development in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme. The EDC took the reins of the national GEW campaign, and that year activities expanded sharply to 15 events reaching more than 16,000 people across the country. From the outset, Ethiopia’s campaign drew prominent political backing, with Prime Minister Hailemariam Dessalegn among the national leaders lending their voices to the celebration of entrepreneurship. 

Over the following decade, GEW Ethiopia evolved into one of the largest and most decentralized campaigns in the world. Coordinated today by the Entrepreneurship Development Institute (EDI) – the successor to the EDC, operating under the Ministry of Labor and Skills – the campaign reaches deep into Ethiopia’s regions, with entrepreneurship trainings, business idea competitions, mentorship sessions, panel discussions, and student innovation exhibitions held in Addis Ababa as well as cities and towns including Hawassa, Bahir Dar, Debre Markos, Gondar, Mekelle, Debre Birhan, and locations across the Oromia, Amhara, and Tigray regions. The campaign has long enjoyed high-profile support: in 2016, First Lady Roman Tesfaye Abneh issued a public message of encouragement for GEW Ethiopia. 

The scale of that grassroots effort became globally visible in 2025, when GEW Ethiopia, led by the Entrepreneurship Development Institute, sat atop the global GEW leaderboard alongside Brazil, with each country registering more than 5,700 events. The achievement underscored how a campaign that began with a single host and a few hundred participants had grown into a nationwide movement spanning universities, polytechnic colleges, regional governments, and the private sector. 

Ethiopia has also been an active participant in GEN’s Startup Nations policy community. At the Global Entrepreneurship Congress (GEC) in Istanbul in 2018, Mehbratou Meles, State Minister of Industry, represented Ethiopia in a series of African regional policy dialogues convened around the Congress. Speaking alongside counterparts from across the continent, she described Ethiopia’s structural transformation from an agriculture-led economy toward industry and outlined the country’s adoption of a national entrepreneurship strategy developed with UNCTAD and UNIDO support, emphasizing the need to build opportunities for women and youth and to shift mindsets toward job creation. 

That ministerial engagement has deepened over time. Mekeleya Bargicho, Senior Technology Advisor to the Minister at the Ministry of Labour and Skill, joined the Startup Nations Ministerial steering committee, and the Ministry of Innovation and Technology has been a standing member of the Startup Nations community in recent years. GEN’s engagement has unfolded against the backdrop of an ambitious national reform agenda, including Ethiopia’s Startup Act and a draft National Entrepreneurship Policy and Strategy that EDI and the Ministry of Labor and Skills have advanced through broad consultation with government, private sector, academic, and development partners. 

Ethiopian startups have also competed on GEN’s global stage. Since its launch in 2019, the Entrepreneurship World Cup (EWC) – a startup pitch competition run by GEN with millions of dollars in prizes for promising founders from roughly 200 countries – has provided Ethiopian companies with access to free training resources, mentorship, and exposure to potential investors. Three Ethiopian startups have reached the EWC Top 100: Zafree Papers, which manufactures 100% tree-free pulp paper from agricultural waste, in 2020; Coffee Resurrect, Inc., a biotechnology company creating personal care products, nutraceuticals, and food ingredients, in 2021; and Invicta Partners, a technology firm offering security, data center, and managed services, in 2024. 

Zafree Papers founder Bethelhem Dejene, who advanced to the top ten of the 2020 EWC Global Finals, has spoken about how the experience accelerated her company’s understanding of raising investment in a short time. Both she and Coffee Resurrect founder and CEO Almaw Molla have been part of the GEN Starters Club, a community connecting high-potential founders to networking opportunities and peers around the world – a path Ethiopia first joined in 2017 with Addis Ababa-based Online Hisab. Almaw Molla also went on to launch a chapter of Startup Huddle in Addis Ababa in December 2023, connecting the city to a global network of more than 80 Startup Huddle chapters that support local founders through monthly, peer-driven meetups. 

Ethiopia’s entrepreneurship ecosystem has featured in GEN’s research and knowledge networks as well. Wollo University has been a member of the Global Entrepreneurship Research Network, contributing academic perspective to GEN’s global research community, and Ethiopia’s firm dynamics have informed wider studies of high-growth firms in emerging economies. 

GEN maintains relationships with key Ethiopian ecosystem stakeholders, including the Entrepreneurship Development Institute, the Ministry of Labor and Skills, the Ministry of Innovation and Technology, Wollo University, and the network of universities, polytechnic colleges, regional governments, and local organizers that power the country’s GEW campaign each year. Dr. Hassen Hussein, who leads EDI, has served as the driving force behind Ethiopia’s national host organization. 

As Ethiopia pursues one of Africa’s most ambitious entrepreneurship reform agendas, GEN’s mission in the country remains to connect its founders, institutions, and policymakers to leading-edge research, proven programs, and a global community of peers. With one of the world’s largest GEW campaigns, a growing presence in the Entrepreneurship World Cup and Startup Huddle, and deepening engagement in GEN’s policy and research networks, Ethiopia has become one of the most dynamic entrepreneurship ecosystems on the continent.