Insights from Commonwealth Scholarship entrepreneurs
Fariba Soetan
Head of Policy and Research at the ACU
On 12 September the ACU, in collaboration with the Commonwealth Secretariat and the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission (CSC), convened a discussion at Marlborough House, London, to explore how young entrepreneurs are reshaping economies and communities across the Commonwealth.
At the centre of the event were four Commonwealth Startup Fellowship entrepreneurs, who showcased how alumni of Commonwealth Scholarships are turning their education and experience into innovative businesses that tackle real-world challenges. Their ventures span agricultural technology, energy, and digital solutions, but what unites them is a commitment to building resilience, creating jobs, and unlocking opportunities for others in their communities.
For the ACU, the event was more than a showcase - it was a chance to gather evidence and insights to inform our ongoing advocacy with governments and partners across the Commonwealth. With CHOGM 2026 on the horizon, and youth employment a pressing challenge in many member countries, the voices of these young entrepreneurs are helping shape the policy messages we will discuss with heads of government and education ministers.
Why entrepreneurship matters now
As ACU Secretary General Professor Colin Riordan emphasised in his opening remarks, entrepreneurship is not a luxury for young people in the Commonwealth - it is a necessity. Sixty percent of the Commonwealth’s population is under 30, and in many regions, especially Sub-Saharan Africa, millions of young people enter the workforce each year while far fewer jobs are created. Prolonged youth unemployment risks eroding trust, stability, and opportunity in a country’s economy.
Entrepreneurship offers a pathway forward. Evidence shows that youth-led businesses create jobs, generate local supply chains, and foster the blend of digital, technical, and soft skills that today’s labour markets demand. In the Commonwealth context, shared language, legal frameworks, and trade ties can lower barriers for cross-border collaboration and growth.
Key insights from the discussion
The entrepreneurs’ experiences, alongside reflections from policymakers and Commonwealth High Commissioners, highlighted several themes that will feed directly into ACU’s policy and advocacy work:
- Universities as catalysts: higher education institutions must move beyond lecture halls and act as incubators for innovation, building connections between students and enterprise, mentoring, and industry.
- Access to finance: youth-led ventures often struggle to secure affordable financing, making it difficult to scale up. Targeted interventions and more enabling regulatory frameworks are needed.
- Inclusive ecosystems: women, rural youth, and disadvantaged groups continue to face barriers to entrepreneurship, from limited digital access to lack of childcare support. Removing these barriers is both a moral and economic imperative.
- Policy coherence: governments must design policies that simultaneously encourage innovation and accountability, from intellectual property protection, to AI, to supportive tax and trade measures.
- The Commonwealth advantage: shared networks, language, and market systems can accelerate growth for young entrepreneurs - if they are supported to seize those opportunities.
What the ACU is doing
The event at Marlborough House built on the ACU’s wider programme of work on employability, skills, and entrepreneurship, including:
- Convening leadership through the ACU’s Higher Education Taskforce, which is mandated by Commonwealth Education Ministers to shape policy recommendations on youth employability and entrepreneurship ahead of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in 2026.
- Researching labour market trends in partnership with the Commonwealth of Learning, to map how universities are embedding entrepreneurial and skills-based courses into their curricula.
- Building communities of practice, such as the Entrepreneurship Education Community of Practice, where educators and policymakers exchange knowledge with entrepreneurs, supported by partners like the Commonwealth Business Women’s Network.
- Developing Commonwealth-specific guidance on enterprise education, adapting existing frameworks to support institutions across diverse contexts.
Looking ahead, the ACU Congress this November will provide another platform to refine these insights with a global community of higher education leaders. The evidence gathered - including from Commonwealth Startup Fellows - will directly shape the advocacy messages we take forward to Commonwealth governments and CHOGM 2026.