Innovation – Private and public sector work together in the Mediterranean countries

From the Region Sud to Tunisia, via Spain, institutions and innovation stakeholders are working more closely together to counter the effects of the pandemic and prepare for the post Covid-19 world.

“The health crisis has shown the importance of innovation skills and networks across the Mediterranean in finding solutions amid the pandemic,” points out Anima Investment Network general delegate Emmanuel Noutary, who hails the “excellent collaboration between public and private sectors in certain countries.”

One example comes from the director of the Business Innovation Unit at the Catalan Agency for Business Competitiveness ACCIO Àurea Rodriguez. “With very few resources, we set up a network of companies who agreed to work together towards solving the most pressing problems,” she says. “Logistics, the lack of protective equipment, field hospitals, respirators… It was a wonderful example of the collective force we will need to produce once this pandemic is over.”

This resilience and capacity for innovation is going to become even more central to strategies of attractiveness in Mediterranean countries, especially where relocation of value chains is concerned. In Tunisia, for example, the 2018 Start-Up Act, aimed at boosting innovation and start-ups, was the result of public-private consultations.

“In 2020, at the height of the pandemic, the passing of a law on alternative financing – or crowdfunding- added to the act by allowing the creation of platforms to fund these innovative projects,” points out Tunisian Foreign Investment Agency FIPA’s sales director Zied Lahbib. “These initiatives show the importance of a concerted approach by public and private sectors to put in place efficient tools to promote innovation development,” he adds.

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