Kinshasa, June 10th, 2025 (CPA). – The list of small and medium-sized enterprises selected for the business plan competition (Copa) was published on Monday by the ‘TRANSFORM’ project on the project’s electronic platform, the CPA learnt on Tuesday from a press release. ‘The coordination unit of the project to empower women entrepreneurs and upgrade small and medium-sized enterprises for economic transformation and employment (Project Transform) is pleased to announce the publication of the results of the business plan competition (Copa) for established SMEs on the Copa Transform electronic platform,’ it read. According to the source, a public ceremony to present the winners will be held in each of the towns within the operational perimeter of the ‘Transform’ project, according to a schedule to be announced in the next few days. According to the same source, the selection notification for the candidate SMEs in Goma and Bukavu will be made at the appropriate time.
The next steps for the selected SMEs
The same press release goes on to say that the next stages for the SMEs selected will involve a personalized support program.
The next stages will be notification of selection and the sending of individual notification messages to the selected and non-selected candidates, a basic information session on the support process in each city, a scoping session to define the support priorities and set the associated implementation plan, then the financing agreement between the winners and the project coordination unit, and finally the implementation of the support and progressive disbursement. The same source pointed out that the process led by the Deloitte-I&F-KE Consortium also included setting and validating the criteria with stakeholders from the SME ecosystem, the publicity and awareness campaign, the online submission of business plans on the Copa Transforme platform, the evaluation of the applications (business plans) by independent experts and the selection of the best projects according to rigorous criteria. The business plan competition is part of component 1 of the Transform project, which aims to support and promote SMEs in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Its objective is to create a pipeline of competitive and prosperous SMEs that will strengthen and contribute to the national economy. CPA/