Empowering Next-Gen Social Enterprises across Ireland & West Africa

AIDI has announced a €1.2M seed grant acceleration fund dedicated to youth-led creative hubs and sustainable craft cooperatives across Ireland and West Africa. The fund targets ventures where culture is the economy: textile studios, pottery collectives, digital storytelling labs and fair-trade artisan networks.

Forty-two ventures entered the first cohort, each receiving not just capital but twelve months of incubation — bookkeeping, export readiness, EU grant literacy and impact measurement. Early results are striking: cooperative revenues are up on average 60% within two quarters.

Applications for the second cohort open this autumn, with dedicated streams for young women artisans and for Irish-African joint ventures. The message of the fund is simple: creativity is infrastructure, and young people are its architects.