Inside Masaf Spaces — the region's first innovation hub empowering the next generation of entrepreneurs
A 2024 year-in-review: launching the first innovation hub in the Somali Region of Ethiopia, with a focus on youth, women, and underserved communities.
2024 was the year MASAF proved its model. From a single hub in Jigjiga, the organization reached thousands of young people with skills training, entrepreneurship support, and community programming that translated ambition into livelihoods.
The numbers tell part of the story: hundreds trained in employability and digital skills, dozens of startups supported through incubation, and a growing network of employer partners committed to hiring from MASAF's talent pool. But the deeper story is in the individual transformations — the young woman who launched a tailoring business after a skills course, the intern who became a program facilitator, the community that gathered for its first youth-led dialogue.
MASAF's focus on women, internally displaced persons, and persons with disabilities was not an add-on — it was foundational. Every program was designed to lower the barriers these populations face, from flexible scheduling to accessible locations to curricula that reflect their economic realities.
As the year closed, MASAF hosted its Year-End Event with Mama Asli Abade — the first female pilot in Africa and the Middle East — symbolizing the organization's commitment to showing young people that their futures are not constrained by geography or circumstance.