Before Financing: Where SME Support Programs Really Make a Difference in Entrepreneurial Ecosystems
The brand new international airport now connecting the mining city of Kolwezi DRC to the world.
New airports have been opening at a faster pace in recent months across high-potential markets. Take DRC: in just a few months, no fewer than seven new airports will become operational. Medium-sized, sophisticated, they connect mining hubs and agricultural regions to the world.
They are often perceived as standalone infrastructure projects.
Yet their functionality and scalability depend on dense coordination systems – roads and logistics, water and energy, health and safety, suppliers and users, human capital and resources.
Therefore, in the panel discussion on “Structuring bankable and secure projects” at Katanga Business Meeting 2026 (KBM), an annual convening of the global mining industry, I made a parallel with SME support programs in entrepreneurial ecosystems in high-potential markets.
The Limits of Finance-Centric Thinking
Many SME support programs still implicitly communicate that access to capital is disconnected from the other stages in the entrepreneurial journey.
As a result, many entrepreneurs tend to regard access to capital as the centerpiece of their journey. Once I secure funding, the rest will follow, goes the widespread thinking among entrepreneurs.
To be clear, access to capital remains a persistent barrier to SME growth. As SMEs are the engine of most economies in high potential markets - representing 60% of jobs in DRC for instance; their ability to access to capital shall be part of SME support programs.
But the fact is that access to capital shall not have a lead role in the entrepreneur's journey.
This is the rationale behind an ongoing USD 300 million World Bank project in DRC called the Campaign for Registration in the Trade and Mobile Credit Register.
Spread across several provinces, the Campaign has enabled almost 5000 entrepreneurs to formalize their businesses. It positions formalization as the key that opens many doors for entrepreneurs, from opportunity generation to administrative compliance to access to capital.
Despite the effectiveness of the World Bank Campaign and other initiatives, a paradox remains: small businesses are formalized, yet they still struggle to access capital.
So, the question becomes: what really prevents entrepreneurs from accessing capital?
Why Stakeholder Mapping Matters
In the panel discussion at KBM, various stakeholders described a sober state of the entrepreneurial ecosystem:
Banks remain conservative in supporting early-stage projects.
Insurers focus primarily on large projects and traditional industries.
Legal advisors position themselves as essential yet reckon they are insufficiently accessible to most SMEs.
In this context, tackling the issue of effective support to SMEs requires support institutions to place great importance on the structuring of entrepreneurs’ projects, which itself begins with a process that so far has been overlooked: stakeholder mapping.
Briefly put, stakeholder mapping enables entrepreneurs to get a better understanding of the environment they operate in, notably the entrepreneurial ecosystem, and to build the resilience they need to grow.
Practically speaking, through the stakeholder mapping process, entrepreneurs can:
Identify stakeholders in the ecosystem – types, roles, capabilities.
Classify and assess stakeholders against the entrepreneurs’ needs and goals.
Select stakeholders with whom partnerships could unlock growth.
Build an engagement strategy, factoring links, risks, opportunities.
Perhaps more importantly, this process enables entrepreneurs to reveal who the most strategic stakeholder is in the ecosystem.
A Broader Lesson for SME Support Programs
Capital rarely flows to projects in isolation. It flows through relationships, reputation, signals of credibility, and trusted intermediaries.
Ecosystems allocate opportunities through trust long before they allocate capital.
An illustrative case is Sivi Malukisa, who made a rare public appearance at KBM and thinks that entrepreneurial pitches are not where growth for entrepreneurs is.
She runs Manitech, a Kinshasa DRC -based, young agrifood company that has been collecting several prizes and accolades in recent years.
After years of pitching to investors, she eventually realized that she had a narrow view of the outside world. She then proceeded to extensively map stakeholders in the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
She found that the stakeholder most willing to finance her growth had been there from day one: the customer.
She then shifted her focus toward customer relationships, execution, and customer satisfaction.
Today, investors regularly express interest in her business.
This trajectory is applicable to thousands of SMEs in high-potential markets.
Access to opportunities requires evaluating strategies, questioning assumptions, adopting new processes and tools, and pivoting business models.
SME support programs are central in fostering this principle. They are also central in promoting another principle – surely superior to the aforementioned: access to capital is inherently dependent on building trust, relationships, collaboration, and partnerships.
What many entrepreneurs interpret as a financing barrier is often a credibility barrier.
Ultimately, the next frontier for support institutions and SME programs is not helping entrepreneurs access capital. But rather they should help entrepreneurs become curious about the entrepreneurial ecosystem and equip them with the skills, practices, and tools to navigate ever-changing ecosystems.
Because just like airports, sustainable projects are never built alone and constantly evolving.
