On 27 November 2024, the Tunisian-Swedish Chamber of Commerce (CCTS) and the Mediterranean School of Business (MSB) at South Mediterranean University (SMU) held the seminar “Shared Experiences: Start-up Incubation in Tunisia and Sweden” at the SMU campus in Les Jardins du Lac 2, Tunis, in collaboration with the Embassy of Sweden in Tunisia. The seminar compared how Tunisia and Sweden foster entrepreneurship in academic environments and how start-ups are financed.
The seminar was opened by H.E. Cecilia Wramsten Usher, Ambassador of Sweden to Tunisia, Mr. Sami Ghazali of the Ministry of Communication Technologies, Mr. Khaled Hadded, Chairman of CCTS, and Ms. Leila Triki, Dean of MSB. Karim Jouini, Founder and CEO of Expensya, and the Enactus Tunisian Business School team, winners of the Enactus 2024 World Cup, then shared Tunisian success stories.
The first session turned to start-up incubation at universities. Peter Stany, Innovation Leader at Mälardalen University, presented the Swedish approach, joining via Teams, followed by a panel with Farouk Zouhir of Enactus Tunisia, Noomen Lahimer of the SMU incubator and Walid Maraihi of the Tek-Up University incubator.
The second panel addressed start-up financing, with David Carlsson of ALMI Sweden (via Teams), Karim Jouini, Tarak Triki of Smart Capital, Chiraz Arfaoui of Wikistartup and Aymen Mtimet of Deloitte Consulting, who presented the PROMISE programme linking PhDs to Tunisia’s innovation ecosystem. Mohamed Salah Boulila of MAZAM underlined the role of the Tunisian Startup Act. The discussions were moderated by Salma-Inès Daou, faculty member at SMU.
The organisers also thanked the academics and entrepreneurs linked to Swedish universities and companies who contributed to the seminar. In its own message after the event, the Embassy of Sweden in Tunisia thanked CCTS and MSB for organising the seminar and for letting the Embassy be part of it.
