The group is organized in two main issues: development economics and business and management.

The development economics subgroup will offer some brief reports around the macro variables and economic sustainability of Sierra Leone, such as production, inequality, poverty, institutions for business and development, environment and so on.

The purpose of the reports is: students can find the evolution of the key variables to start a business and to analyze the macroeconomic situation of the country. Students of the University of Makeni may adapt these reports to the micro level and the  Makeni’s reality.  All the reports will be downloaded from the HD_Lab website. For instance, some of the reports will be: Doing Business in Sierra Leone; the evolution of poverty and inequality in Sierra Leone; multidimensional poverty in Bombali  and Sierra Leone; governance indicators; foreign aid and foreign direct investments in Sierra Leone: what sectors are being privileged by donors?; geography, natural resources and development: curse or blessing?; evolution of the human development indicators in Sierra Leone; health and development: the Ebola effect… and many more suggested by Unimak’s students.

 

The business and management subgroup…

We will split our team in two groups

-Group 1: Students will examine the conditions in Sierra Leone and study how current environments - political, social, technological and economic - can affect entrepreneurs' focus on growth, scalability and partnerships as they launch new businesses. It seeks to explore questions such as how business objectives manifest themselves in practice, how Sierra Leone's challenges are identified and how solutions are developed how future Makeni entrepreneurs can leverage their ideas to create businesses.

Students will meet every X time with Makeni students to team up and ensure that everyone is "in the same boat". Students will work in multidisciplinary teams to produce a business plan of the final project for the project that the students of Makeni present or a strategy document that addresses a specific business and development need of a region of Sierra Leone. CEU and Makeni students will draw conclusions on how project theory contributes to the success of a particular project and examine how these plans evolve, from initial design to improved effectiveness and refinement of program theory.

-Group 2: This group will focus on funding opportunities. Through research, events and networking, the team will try to understand the specific challenges of search funds and offer resources that help entrepreneurs and investors successfully embark on this form of entrepreneurship. The team will explore with ideas to fund Makeni’s students and cooperate to Makeni’s development. They will explore associations and contact institutions (international and national) They will be responsible in building Seeding group brand image. Students will do network formal and informal. The team will benchmark in order to generate new ideas.