GOVERNANCE – Change of leadership at ANIMA on the occasion of La Méditerranée du Futur

The ANIMA network will gather on 13 November an extraordinary Board of Directors associating all the current directors of the association, and those newly elected for the period 2019-2021.

This meeting will be organised on the sidelines of the conference La Méditerranée du Futur – Acte II, in which the ANIMA network takes a very active part alongside the Région SUD – Provence Alpes Côte d’Azur, with the perspective of contributing to the Mediterranean Summit announced by the President of the French Republic for June 2019.

During this extraordinary Board of Directors, Mr. Khalil Laabidi, President of the Tunisia Investment Authority, who has chaired ANIMA for the last five years, will hand over his duties to Abdelkader Betari, Director of International Cooperation and Economic Promotion of the Oriental Agency (Morocco). The new Board of Directors brings together 15 organisations representing nine of the 18 countries covered by the network. Among the new members, we should note the entry of the Chamber of Commerce of Marseille (France) and the Center for Promotion and Internationalization of Enterprises of Piedmont (Italy). The Board of Directors will discuss the strategic axes of the network for the next term of office, a subject that echoes the conference “La Mediterranée du Futur” in the margins of which this meeting is held.

For three years, ANIMA has indeed consolidated its missions around the ambition to contribute to developing, with the Southern Mediterranean countries, new territorial and economic development models, respectful of their social and environmental impact. Through initiatives like EDILE (investment impact assessment), THE NEXT SOCIETY (reinforcement of innovation ecosystems), MedGeneration and DiafrikInvest (mobilisation of skills from the diaspora), ANIMA has in recent years developed the tools, networks and capacities to serve this ambition.

During La Méditerranée du Futur, ANIMA will organise two workshops during which its partners will illustrate this transition in progress:

• A workshop on the ecosystems supporting innovation in MENA countries, which will illustrate how the models are evolving and the innovation which is emerging in these countries;
• A workshop in partnership with the French Development Agency (AFD), on how collective intelligence is increasingly used as a working method to think the future, both by companies and by the development actors. This workshop will be the starting point of a participatory consultation process to imagine a “desirable” Mediterranean, with a view to inspiring the Mediterranean Summit announced by the President of the French Republic for June 2019.

During these workshops, several partners of the network are expected to present their points of view – StartUp Morocco, Berytech (Lebanon), Flat6Labs (Egypt, Tunisia), Yomken (Egypt), – as well as regional actors – The Camp, ZeBox, the association Open Innovation PACA, etc.

For more information: mediterraneedufutur@maregionsud.fr