COOPERATION – ANIMA and Business France officially launch the REA-BRIDGE Africa project at Emerging Valley 2021

After a virtual conference in July, the REA-BRIDGE Africa project was officially launched at Emerging Valley – on 14 December 2021 in Marseille – during a session rich in interventions and activities. A delegation of about thirty participants from REA-BRIDGE Africa went to the event – with 9 managers of African entrepreneurs’ networks (Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Niger, Nigeria, Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Senegal, Uganda), 7 entrepreneurs, 4 mentors and members of the ANIMA, Business France and French African Foundation teams.

The launch conference, announced the same morning by Franck Riester, Minister Delegate to the Minister of Europe and Foreign Affairs in charge of Foreign Trade and Attractiveness, was held on the main stage of the event. Several speakers followed one another, first of all the officials who are at the origin of the project – Jean-Sébastion Conty, Deputy Director of Development at the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs, Bourry Ndao, from the Presidential Council for Africa, Philippe Yvergniaux, Director of International Cooperation at Business France and Director of the project and Emmanuel Noutary, General Delegate of ANIMA Investment Network and also Director of REA-BRIDGE Africa.

The floor was also given to the beneficiaries of the project and its participants: Pierrick Chabi, CEO of Wakatoon and Young Leader of the French African Foundation, shared his interest in the diaspora mentoring activity offered to entrepreneurs in the network. He explained how this interest led him to mentor a Ghanaian entrepreneur, founder of Leti Arts (video games), and the perspectives he sees thanks to this new relationship. To close this session, Rouffahi Koabo, Director of the CIPMEN incubator in Niger, and David Cheboryot, Director of the E4Impact incubator in Kenya, in turn presented the interest of the REA-BRIDGE Africa project for their business and the twinning relationship that resulted from the project and a first meeting that took place in Cape Town in November. Among the themes they wish to address in the framework of their twinning, one notes for example the drafting of a Start-Up Act for Niger or the labelling of Kenyan incubators.

Several activities were also held the day before; on Monday 13 afternoon, 9 network managers met to talk about the challenges of their networks in order to be matched with each other and to share good practices, while entrepreneurs were able to pitch in front of Young Leaders and find a mentor to accompany them in their project, and in particular their internationalisation process.

This work and this event are in line with the vision of the Presidential Council for Africa, which is convinced that “presenting success stories and role models makes it possible to embody and make concrete the field of possibilities” and that mentoring is “a powerful lever for boosting entrepreneurship, for connecting expertise and entrepreneurs”, thus considering that the REA-BRIDGE Africa project “is intended to give rise to and structure existing synergies, and to hatch an ecosystem that is just waiting to be deployed”.