Sierra Leone does not lack young people with ideas. It does not lack ambition. It does not lack creativity. What we have often lacked is the structure around those young people, the system that helps ideas move from classroom discussion to market opportunity, from theory to practice, from isolated enthusiasm to sustainable enterprise.
This is why the SLEEK project is important.
SLEEK is not simply another entrepreneurship training initiative. Its real value lies in its ambition to strengthen the entrepreneurial ecosystem within Sierra Leone’s Higher Education Institutions. At the heart of the project is the creation of Entrepreneurship Academies inside universities. These academies are designed to train educators, support experiential learning, promote student innovation, and connect universities more deliberately to the wider world of business, finance, policy, technology, and community development.
That is a major shift.
For too long, entrepreneurship education has often been treated as a classroom subject rather than an ecosystem function. Students learn concepts, prepare business plans, and sometimes participate in competitions. But once they leave the classroom, they often enter a fragmented world: banks that do not trust early-stage ventures, companies that are not linked to universities, investors with no structured pipeline, policymakers with limited data, and communities that are rarely connected to formal innovation systems.
SLEEK is trying to change that.
Its significance is that it positions the university not as an ivory tower, but as a platform for economic transformation. The Entrepreneurship Academy becomes a bridge between education, business, innovation, policy, and community. It becomes a place where students are not only taught entrepreneurship, but are connected to the resources, relationships, markets, mentors, and institutions that can help them build.
Innovation SL’s Role: The Private Sector Ecosystem Translator
Innovation SL’s role in SLEEK is rooted in our experience as an ecosystem builder.
Since 2017, we have worked to build platforms that connect entrepreneurs, mentors, investors, policymakers, development partners, media, and private sector actors.
Through Freetown Pitch Night, Freetown Innovation Week, our work with GEN Sierra Leone, our startup support programmes, our investor-readiness work, and our ecosystem-building activities, we have seen first-hand that entrepreneurship does not grow in isolation. It grows through relationships.
Our role in SLEEK is therefore not simply to deliver a session. Our role is to help the Entrepreneurship Academies move from an academic view of entrepreneurship to a practical ecosystem view.
That distinction matters.
An academic view of entrepreneurship may ask: What should students learn?
An ecosystem view asks deeper questions: Who will mentor them? Who will open markets for them? Who will finance them? Who will give them internships? Who will validate their ideas? Who will help them register companies?
Who will tell their stories? Who will include young women, rural students, informal innovators, and students who are usually left out? Who inside the university has the authority to institutionalise this work beyond the life of a project?
These are the questions that determine whether an Entrepreneurship Academy becomes a temporary activity or a permanent engine of change.
As part of SLEEK, Innovation SL has conducted sessions on entrepreneurial ecosystems and stakeholder mapping. The ecosystem session helped participants understand entrepreneurship not as an individual act alone, but as part of a wider system of actors, incentives, institutions, resources, and relationships. The stakeholder mapping session then moved from understanding the ecosystem to actively mapping it — identifying who matters, what they control, how connected they are, and how each Academy should engage them.
This is where the work becomes practical.
Why Stakeholder Mapping Matters
Stakeholder mapping is often misunderstood. It is sometimes treated as a simple list of names: ministries, banks, companies, NGOs, students, lecturers, investors, and media. But a list is not a strategy.
A rigorous stakeholder map does much more.
It helps each Entrepreneurship Academy understand the real ecosystem around it. It shows who has power, who has interest, who controls resources, who can block progress, who can accelerate progress, who brings legitimacy, who brings technical expertise, who brings finance, who brings market access, and who ensures inclusion.
For SLEEK, stakeholder mapping is not an administrative exercise. It is the foundation for partnership development, resource mobilisation, student support, institutional sustainability, and ecosystem transformation.
Each Academy must be able to answer five strategic questions:
Who are the key stakeholders around this Academy?
What resources, influence, knowledge, or legitimacy do they control?
How connected or disconnected are they from the university and students?
Which stakeholders are the strategic priorities for the Academy?
What engagement strategy should the Academy use for each stakeholder group?
When these questions are answered properly, the Academy moves from accidental engagement to deliberate ecosystem building.
From Random Contacts to Strategic Relationships
One of the central messages of our SLEEK stakeholder mapping session is that relationships must be designed.
A university may know a bank, but that does not mean there is a financing pathway for student ventures. A lecturer may know an entrepreneur, but that does not mean students have access to structured mentoring. A minister may attend an event, but that does not mean the Academy is aligned with national policy. A company may express interest, but that does not mean there is a clear internship or partnership pathway.
Stakeholder mapping helps expose the difference between loose contact and strategic relationship.
This is why the process we introduced is rigorous. It follows six stages:
First, stakeholder identification: each Academy creates a long list of all relevant actors.
Second, stakeholder profiling: each stakeholder is examined in terms of what they control, what they need, what they can offer, what they expect, and what risks they may have.
Third, power-interest analysis: stakeholders are placed into categories based on influence and interest.
Fourth, stakeholder scoring: influence, interest, resources, accessibility, strategic fit, trust, and inclusion value are assessed.
Fifth, relationship strength mapping: current vs desired relationships are analysed.
Sixth, roadmap development: analysis becomes an engagement plan with actions, timelines, and responsibilities.
This shifts the mindset from “we know people” to “we know who matters and how to engage them.”
The Academy at the Centre of the Ecosystem
In our model, the Entrepreneurship Academy sits at the centre of three rings: inner stakeholders, support stakeholders, and enabling environment stakeholders.
The inner ring includes students, lecturers, leadership, alumni, and Innovation SL.
The middle ring includes mentors, SMEs, banks, investors, incubators, media, and private sector partners.
The outer ring includes ministries, regulators, development partners, and community institutions.
The Academy is therefore surrounded by actors who determine success or failure.
The map must also show flows: knowledge, funding, mentorship, policy, market access, student pipeline, and visibility.
When these flows improve, the ecosystem improves.
The Expected Outcomes of the Mapping Exercise
The outcome is a stakeholder engagement roadmap for each Academy, including prioritisation, relationship gaps, and action plans.
More importantly, it helps each Academy reposition itself as a value provider rather than a requester.
The Academy becomes a source of talent, innovation, research, and entrepreneurial pipelines for stakeholders.
This shifts the institution from dependency to value creation.
Wider Implications for Sierra Leone
SLEEK contributes to moving Sierra Leone from event-based entrepreneurship to institution-based ecosystem development.
This is critical because ecosystems require structures, not just activities.
By embedding Entrepreneurship Academies in universities, SLEEK creates long-term institutional anchors across the country.
This allows multiple regions to develop their own innovation pipelines, not just Freetown.
This can also help improve inclusion.
If stakeholder mapping is done properly, Academies will not only engage elite students or already-connected entrepreneurs. They will identify women students, rural youth, informal innovators, students with disabilities, community groups, market women, alumni entrepreneurs, and local SMEs. This matters because entrepreneurship must not become another exclusive space. It must become a vehicle for broad-based participation.
From Teaching Entrepreneurship to Building the Future
For Innovation SL, SLEEK is closely aligned with our broader mission: Creating the Future Today.
We have always believed that entrepreneurship is not only about starting businesses. It is about building agency. It is about giving young people the confidence, networks, tools, and platforms to shape their own future. It is about changing the way society sees young people, not as passive beneficiaries, but as builders, innovators, employers, problem-solvers, and citizens.
The sessions we have conducted under SLEEK are part of that wider philosophy.
The ecosystem session helped participants see the bigger picture.
The stakeholder mapping session helped them translate that picture into practical action.
Together, they show that entrepreneurship education must go beyond lectures and business plans. It must connect students to the real world. It must bring the private sector into the university. It must bring universities into the ecosystem. It must help government see universities as engines of innovation. It must help investors see students not as risky dreamers, but as future founders who can be prepared, supported, and de-risked.
SLEEK gives us an opportunity to do this deliberately.
Conclusion: The Real Work Begins After the Mapping
The stakeholder mapping exercise is not the end of the process. It is the beginning.
The real test will be what each Academy does with its map.
Will it form an advisory board?
Will it engage local SMEs?
Will it build structured relationships with banks and investors?
Will it create a student innovation pipeline?
Will it involve alumni entrepreneurs?
Will it tell the stories of student founders?
Will it build partnerships that survive beyond the project cycle?
Will it institutionalise entrepreneurship inside the university?
These are the questions that matter.
SLEEK has created a powerful opportunity. Innovation SL is proud to play its role as the private sector ecosystem translator, helping universities move from theory to practice, from isolated teaching to ecosystem engagement, and from stakeholder lists to strategic partnerships.
If we do this well, the outcome will not only be stronger Entrepreneurship Academies. It will be a stronger Sierra Leonean entrepreneurship ecosystem.
And that is the bigger vision: universities that produce not only graduates, but innovators; not only job seekers, but job creators; not only ideas, but enterprises; not only academic knowledge, but national transformation.
That is why SLEEK matters.
That is why stakeholder mapping matters.
And that is why Innovation SL is committed to this work.
