Mapping Morocco's entrepreneurial ecosystem for a European development finance institution

The challenge

A European development finance institution was deciding how to deploy ecosystem-building resources from a EUR 6.5 million technical assistance facility in Morocco. Before committing them, it needed to know who the key actors were, where the gaps were, and how to get the findings to the people who could act on them.

What we did

• Worked alongside LixCap, whose Casablanca team ran 21 key informant interviews across regulators, support organisations, capital providers, financial service providers and small and growing businesses.
• Turned that research into a public, interactive ecosystem map, giving the institution and its partners a navigable picture of the actor landscape, the links between actors and the gaps.
• Designed a communications plan so the findings did not stay in a report: webinars, one-pagers for each audience segment and direct outreach, targeting 50% viewership among key ecosystem actors, plus a survey on how they intended to use the findings.

Results

• The consortium won a competitive, PRAG-compliant tender and delivered in 2021.
• The institution subsequently funded ecosystem support in Morocco focused on strengthening support organisations, investment readiness and international investor connections, in line with the landscaping’s findings.