Henley Centre for Entrepreneurship Afrinolly project case study

The goal of NICE is to facilitate collaboration and enable Nigerian entrepreneurs to develop skills that lead to sustainable livelihoods and more professional opportunities between the UK and Nigeria.

HCfE led the development and delivery of a programme of entrepreneurial thinking and leadership training for 40 incubator hub managers at the Afrinolly Creative Hub headquarters. The programme consisted of two-weeks of intensive training, followed by extensive coaching of hub managers to help them identify their highest-potential entrepreneurs. These entrepreneurs received extensive mentoring and in June 2019 the top three were then awarded seed capital grant funding.

These three entrepreneurial businesses have attained significant international success. One of them, Jub Travel Films, has won awards from the overall programme to support the further development of their business ideas.

HCfE also worked with the Afrinolly Creative Hub to lead training for the highest potential incubator managers, delivering a customised Professional Certificate in Entrepreneurial Leadership programme to fit the needs of the Nigerian film and media industry. This enabled Afrinolly Creative Hub incubator managers to identify institutional constraints on their growth and development, outline any possible solutions and ensure that the Afrinolly Creative Hub would be a catalyst for entrepreneurship and rapid development of the Nigerian film and media industry.

Thanks to HCfE's input, Afrinolly Creative Hub has since developed its own business model and become a benchmark for incubators in the creative sectors across Africa. By collaborating with training providers, it has rapidly expanded its range of technical training programmes and increased its suite of technical equipment available to its entrepreneurs, enabling more content to be made on site. Afrinolly is in the process of raising private finance in the UK to support its further expansion and has recently been recognised by the African Tech and Creative Group (ATCG) as one of ten MyAfCFTA Nodes in Africa to drive the implementation of the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA).

The programme was judged to be one of the most successful in the British Council’s history in west Africa and HCfE was commissioned to repeat the programme in Ghana in February 2020. The British Council's report on the programme can be read here.