COOPERATION – ANIMA continues its commitment to the African Diaspora and becomes a partner of MEET Africa 2

Expertise France, GIZ (German Cooperation Agency) and ANIMA Investment Network will operate hand in hand in the 2nd phase of the MEET Africa programme, launched on 9 December 2020. Co-financed by the European Union and the French Development Agency (AFD), MEET Africa 2 is intended for the diasporas of Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Mali, Morocco, Senegal and Tunisia, who wish to set up businesses in their countries of origin. The role of ANIMA is to mobilise, promote and animate a network of support organisations for entrepreneurs and investors of the diaspora.

MEET Africa was born from an observation and a desire shared by two continents: Africa, it is no longer necessary to say it, is a territory full of opportunities and innovations; its European diaspora is a relay as dynamic as legitimate.

ANIMA, aware of the related development issues and sharing the same ambitions, has been working since 2005 with Investment Promotion Agencies, networks of entrepreneurs and business support organisations to develop strategies and services for expatriate talents and skills, aiming at mobilising them in the service of their country of origin.

Several projects aimed at encouraging investment by the diaspora have been implemented, including DiafrikInvest, the latest initiative to date, which came to an end in late 2020.

ANIMA now capitalises on its 15 years of experience in the mobilisation of the economic diaspora and becomes a partner of the MEET Africa programme together with Expertise France and the German Cooperation Agency – GIZ.

MEET Africa 2: Empowering Diasporas for Entrepreneurship in Africa.

The business support ecosystem for the local private sector is growing in Africa, but many of these initiatives are only weakly coordinated and a large number of entrepreneurship support operators raises the question of the readability of the offer, its visibility outside the country and the accessibility of these operators for entrepreneurs living abroad. This abundance of players needs to support the structuring of the ecosystem by better adapting their offer to the diasporas; it is a matter of better coordination of the support offered between European and African areas, and better dissemination of the offers to the entrepreneurs of the diaspora.

In this context, MEET Africa 2 aims to promote a sustainable and well-structured relationship between the expatriate community and the targeted African countries, to create and strengthen economic bridges, to formalise and formalise new or existing partnerships, to ease the identification of opportunities in favour of the African Diaspora settled in France.

The initiative will materialise through the development of a Euro-African platform gathering the support offers and services, the accompaniment of 1000 entrepreneurs from the diaspora in Europe, the support of 250 entrepreneurs in Africa, the financing of 170 enterprises and the networking of diaspora support organisations in Europe and Africa.

Connecting stakeholders involved in supporting entrepreneurs and investors to facilitate their collaboration for Africa’s entrepreneurship.

Under the coordination of Expertise France, ANIMA will mobilise all the stakeholders who support entrepreneurs in Europe and Africa and will contribute to the promotion towards the diasporas through the creation of an online platform and the organisation of a major African entrepreneurship forum to be held in 2022.

This networking will enable better coordination of the support organisations that will be able to communicate via the platform, and a matching of the entrepreneurs of the diaspora towards the mechanism adapted to their needs.

The platform’s services will be progressive and built according to the needs expressed by European and African entrepreneurs and support organisations.

For more information, visit the MEET Africa website.