Acting Deputy Vice Chancellor, Research, Innovation, and International Development, Prof Jito Vunualailai

Honourable Secretary of the Ministry of Youth and Sports, Mr. Maritino Nemani

Deputy High Commissioner of Australia, Ms Anna Dorney

ILO Director, Mr. Donglin Li

Deputy Chief Executive Officer, Pacific Disability Forum, Ms. Savina Nongebatu

Entrepreneurs’, Friends and colleagues of UNDP

It is my privilege and honour to be at this workshop which focuses on mapping out the entrepreneurship innovation ecosystem to harness the full potential of entrepreneurship to deliver on the development outcomes relating to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

In the next two days, the participants with the help of the co-facilitators, will be engaged in discussions on the workshop theme, “Scaling Frontier Innovations”, an initiative of DFAT and USP.  They will be working closely with the ecosystem actors to learn, define and understand Pacific entrepreneurial experiences while also identifying Pacific intermediaries and service providers that are already serving as critical enablers to create successful business models with growth pathways in the Pacific.

Together with you, during the course of the event, and after the event, we hope to have created sufficient opportunities to enable collaborations amongst the big private sector companies in the Pacific and also in Australia and New Zealand. The objective is to create a supportive, well connected and well networked innovative and entrepreneurial ecosystem for the Pacific businesses to thrive and grow. Thanks to our partners, to date since last year, we have supported over 70 youth entrepreneurs in the Solomon Islands, 21 in Samoa and over 50 in Fiji (on average, out of which 30 to 40% were women).  Moving forward, through strengthened collaborations with the ecosystem actors in the Pacific, including with the private sector companies based in Australia and New Zealand, we hoped to have tripled these numbers by 2020.

To date, we have been approached by over 20 Australian companies that are interested in providing customized support to develop and harness the innovation and entrepreneurial talent of the youth and the micro entrepreneurs in the Pacific. The majority of them are looking for opportunities to develop commercially viable solutions and investing on women owned and led enterprises.  The areas of interest are: training and mentoring services, South to South exchanges and learning, procurement of promising talents to meet the human resource growth needs of the companies, to investing in promising micro and small businesses to ensure growth pathways for the youth and the youth led enterprises in the Pacific.

UNDP is thankful and privileged to be working closely with our Government partners especially the Ministry of Youth and Sports, USP and DFAT to support innovation and youth entrepreneurship to deliver on the development outcomes. We look forward to deepening these partnerships to cover additional countries in the Pacific.  We will begin the journey in Vanuatu this month and plan to be in the Republic of the Marshall Islands and Tonga by the first quarter of 2020.  Additionally, jointly with our partners’ we would like to host similar events in Australia and New Zealand to deepen the partnership for the SDG and to strategize further.

I hope that you will support us in this endeavour and contribute towards a successful workshop. I welcome and thank “Scaling Frontier Innovation program” and its implementing partners– Will Scott-Kemmis of Second Muse and Audrey Jean-Baptiste from YGAP and USP for their commitment and support.  We value our partnership not only with our development partners but also the private sector in the Pacific, including in Australia and New Zealand that are keen on supporting the young talents in the Pacific.

Thank you.