Building Joint Business Opportunities To Spur Economic Growth in Kenya
This challenge is in phase: Incubate business
Background
Africa’s rapid economic growth, driven by its young population, urbanization, natural resources, and growing consumer base, highlights the continent’s potential for sustainable investment. While challenges like policy gaps and limited tech infrastructure remained, they opened space for meaningful collaboration. German firms, recognized for their engineering and technological expertise, are well-positioned to co-create solutions with African partners in areas such as manufacturing, digitalization, skills development, and logistics.
The Made in Germany–Africa Expo (MiGA) is a prominent trade fair and conference series aimed at strengthening economic ties between Germany and African markets. It provides a platform for German companies to showcase their innovations and connect with African governments, businesses, and consumers.
As part of MiGA June 26th 2025, the lab of tomorrow, with the support of Seedstars, convened a full-day co-creation workshop designed to foster joint ventures and long-term partnerships between German companies and African enterprises. The session combined innovation thinking, collaboration, and problem-solving to align shared interests and unlock scalable opportunities. The objectives were clear: build partnerships that leverage complementary strengths, identify sector challenges, and co-design actionable solutions that could drive sustainable growth.
The workshop brought together participants into four thematic groups Agribusiness, Technology, Manufacturing, and Textile/Apparel each paired with a German partner company. Through a structured co-creation sprint, participants examined pressing industry challenges, scoped the size and scale of these problems, and worked toward framing business opportunities that could evolve into joint ventures. The session culminated in actionable next steps, identifying required partners, positioning solutions, and setting a pathway toward sector-wide business opportunities in partnership with German companies.
Partners
01
Understand
Workshop Objectives
- Facilitate collaboration between German companies and African enterprises with shared business interests.
- Identify common sector challenges and explore how co-created joint ventures can address them sustainably.
- Develop actionable strategies and early-stage partnership blueprints to guide post-event engagements
Business Opportunities
02
Ideate Solutions
For our one-day innovation sprint, 91 local and German companies applied. From these, we handpicked 33 to join an intensive, guided co-creation session aimed at developing strong business ideas with the potential to create real market impact.
Sprint Outcome
At the close of the co-creation sprint, each group emerged with a shared understanding of the scale of challenges, a defined problem statement, and an outline of business opportunities. They also identified key partners required, positioned joint solutions, and mapped out next steps to transform these concepts into viable partnerships. The outcomes provided a strong foundation for cross-continental ventures that align German expertise with African market needs, paving the way for innovative, scalable, and sustainable business solutions.
The 4 solutions out of the cocreation have potential for growth and scale and will be further supported in the subsequent Incubation Phase.
03
Incubate business
The participating teams enter the incubation phase to refine, test and ultimately pilot their business model in the target market. Typically, the incubation phase takes up to 6 months and encompasses coaching for the teams by Business Design experts and might also include additional in-kind support.
The incubation of lot28 will be conducted from September 2025.
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