Last week, our Orange Corners Research Coordinator Milou Derks traveled to Estonia to explore how support systems can better enable digital and green transitions. She took the main stage at Latitude59 — Estonia’s leading tech conference with over 5,000 attendees — to spotlight the power of collective entrepreneurship in driving green and digital transitions. Joined by Rym Jarou (Smart Africa) and Tendai Shamu (First Serve Venture), Milou emphasised the need for inclusive, ecosystem-driven approaches to sustainability.
In addition to the main stage panel, Milou and Esther Mooiman, Digital Coordinator at RVO, co-facilitated a workshop for African entrepreneurship support organisations (ESOs), policymakers, entrepreneurs and EU development partners. The focus: rethinking how support systems can more effectively contribute to digital and green transitions.
The two main takeaways:
1️⃣ Driving transitions requires more than just supporting early-stage innovators. Donors should take a hard look at their incubator programmes and think… is focussing on this alone really creating the impact that I envisioned?
2️⃣ A winner-takes-all mindset doesn’t work — especially not for green transitions. Support actors: is this focus on securing investment and looking for the next unicorn really what will create green change? Maybe the most reliable source of capital is revenue!
So what does work? A thriving ecosystem of 50+ SMEs each contributing locally to systemic change. It’s not about finding the one green unicorn, but about building resilient networks of SMEs across regions. Systems change isn’t about singular success stories: it’s about shared progress.
