News
14 May 2025
Skills mobility and entrepreneurship: Bridges for the future
As the world is facing the challenges of demographic transition, well-managed mobility is becoming a catalyst for inclusive growth and sustainable development. While contributing to the socio-economic development of regions of origin and destination, skills mobility, in particular, represents an opportunity for individuals, especially young people.
Global Skills Partnership
Skills mobility promotes the upgrading of training to give young people access to the labour market, improving the productivity of businesses and their ability to offer decent employment opportunities. It also encourages economic players, including public employment agencies, to match job supply and demand.
Enabel therefore supports those involved in training, employment and entrepreneurship in including international skills mobility into existing systems. Our activities follow the migration model of the Global Skills Partnership, which is promoted by the Center for Global Development. This approach is aligned with the needs of the labour markets of both partner countries and EU Member States and promotes skills development through stable international partnerships.
Entrepreneurial mobility: creating synergies between companies
Enabel is convinced that small and medium-sized enterprises are at the heart of economic development. That is why it has launched the “Pilots for Entrepreneurial Mobility” (PEM). These initiatives support entrepreneurial ecosystems in Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire and Belgium by fostering the creation of mutually beneficial partnerships between businesses of the three countries.
Under the PEM Wecco’ (aimed at Senegalese entrepreneurs) and the PEM N’Zassa projects (aimed at entrepreneurs from Côte d’Ivoire) selected companies receive support in going international through training sessions and business trips to the EU and Belgium in particular and personalised follow-up to consolidate the partnerships.
To date, around 60 partnerships have been forged between Belgian entrepreneurs – including entrepreneurs from the African diasporas – and entrepreneurs from Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire. These partnerships have led to the creation of new companies (joint ventures) as well as business partnerships (imports/exports) and technical partnerships (technology transfers/exchanges).
In the health sector, for example, the Belgian company Multi G signed an agreement with the Senegalese medical company Askcare to supply health posts in rural areas of Senegal with a turnkey cervical cancer prevention solution, enabling large-scale screening and treatment of pre-cancerous lesions.
In the field of education and culture, the Senegalese company Kanarimagik and Belgium’s Jeux d’Eden have signed a partnership to market their products in Belgium and Senegal respectively and agreed to set up a training centre in Dakar for the comic strip and animated image profession.
In Côte d’Ivoire, following its business trip to Belgium, Hans Compagnie signed a commercial representation contract with the Belgian company D-Carbonize, with the aim of offering a carbon assessment service to companies based in Côte d’Ivoire.
public services related to training, employment, and entrepreneurship.
Skills mobility: meeting market needs
While entrepreneurial mobility aims to support the development of businesses and partnerships, skills mobility is another key pillar of our action.
In Morocco, Tunisia and Belgium, the THAMM project (Towards a Holistic Approach to Labour Migration Governance) stimulates collaboration between the public employment services, vocational training centres and businesses in the three countries in shortage occupations such as ICT (Information and Communication Technologies), construction and industry.
The joint work of the agencies in the three countries allowed developing common tools and working methods to better identify the needs of the labour markets and the shortage occupations. The vocational training offer is thus adapted to improve people’s employability, at the same time facilitating international mobility. Harmonising training to the realities of various labour markets further enhances this mobility.
Through FOREM (the Walloon employment agency) we also support training within the OFPPT (Office for Vocational Training and Work Promotion) in Morocco and the ATFP (Agency for Professional Training) in Tunisia, to improve the quality of training and bring it into line with international standards.
Thus, Enabel is taking a long-term approach by developing solid partnerships that also involve the diasporas. By facilitating skills mobility, it strengthens training and employment systems while establishing lasting relations between countries. Enabel is also helping to foster innovative international partnerships and position Belgian expertise on the international stage.