INNOVATION – THE NEXT SOCIETY launches its new action plan at EMERGING Valley 2019

ANIMA Investment Network was very active on the 3rd edition of EMERGING Valley which took place in Aix-en-Provence from December 3 to 5, 2019, mobilising the activities of its initiative THE NEXT SOCIETY on the development of innovation ecosystems, supported by the European Commission.

EMERGING Valley brought together, on thecamp campus, entrepreneurs of African Tech, French and African investors and innovation experts, with a focus this year on Mediterranean countries.

Emmanuel Noutary, General Delegate of ANIMA, spoke at the plenary session on “The emergence of African Entrepreneurial Leadership: Creating a sustainable pipeline for investors through sourcing and training tomorrow’s African leaders”. Alongside the President of the Institut Français, the CEO of Yummy & Alumni SIBC 2018, the founder of LaFactory, the CEO of the African Management Institute, and the co-founder of iSpace Foundation, this table aimed to build on the new generation of entrepreneurs (leaders) to develop projects with an impact on the African continent.

“Africa must trust its youth, African companies must open doors to young people and trust them,” said Mehdi Alaoui, founder of LaFactory. Emmanuel Noutary insisted on the need to bring out leaders and projects in parallel, and then connect them: “A good leader who has a good project positioned on the right market at the right time, who is able to find the necessary resources and execute his plan, that’s a lot of unpredictability. We must challenge our ways of working and disconnect the sourcing of leaders from the sourcing of projects and connect high-potential entrepreneurs with good projects”.

Our startups in the spotlight​

ANIMA network has indeed developed for several years a network in the southern Mediterranean to bring out and support entrepreneurs with high potential. This work was rewarded at EMERGING Valley, as two of the companies supported by ANIMA’s programs were honored.

These are SEN Or’Dur from Senegal, supported by DiafrikInvest, winner of the MedInnovant Africa Prize launched by the Euroméditerranée development institution, and the Algerian Citylocker from the THE NEXT SOCIETY programme, also a finalist in MedInnovant Africa.

CITYLOCKER was nominated among the five finalists out of 129 participants, including three Algerian startups. CITYLOCKER operates an IoT cabinet solution for the delivery of purchases over the Internet. It has set up a mobile application, for professionals and consumers, allowing the management of delivery in lockers accessible 24/7, including follow-up, returns and notified complaints.

SEN Or’Dur won for its part the jury prize. SEN Or’Dur works on the management of plastic waste in a global approach to the collection, sorting, treatment, transformation and marketing sectors. It offers an innovative solution to solve the plastic waste problem by modernising a collection system by installing collection machines in supermarkets. SEN Or’Dur has won a financial allocation of €5,000, the opportunity to test its system on the 480-ha labelled “EcoCité” of Euroméditerranée while benefiting from the support of the local entrepreneurial ecosystem.

These entrepreneurs join a list of more than a dozen young growth companies from THE NEXT SOCIETY and DiafrikInvest initiatives, from all the countries of the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean, and distinguished by juries in France, Germany and the United States, for the innovations they develop, in the face of international competition.

These awards validate ANIMA’s conviction that innovation “Made in the Mediterranean” or “Made in Africa” can today provide answers to challenges that go beyond the borders of the African continent. As proof, in two years, ANIMA’s programs have already enabled accompanied entrepreneurs to raise €1.9 million in investment.

Build solutions between entrepreneurs – large companies – territories​

In response to Emmanuel Noutary’s call for projects to emerge, THE NEXT SOCIETY organised on Thursday, December 5, a collective intelligence workshop to “Leverage organic innovation to access African markets”, led by experts from ANIMA and thecamp.

This workshop mobilised the companies of THE NEXT SOCIETY Club and the partners of Emule Club of the Euroméditerranée development establishment, as well as some of thecamp’s founding members. The City of Marseille and Euroméditerranée were also present to represent the local authorities, and about twenty innovators from the southern and eastern Mediterranean region.

During 5-minute rounds, the networking of this mix of actors was, according to the general opinion, an invaluable opportunity to share knowledge, open-mindedness and collaboration on the emergence of answers to the problems formulated by each. At the end of this workshop, a contact request table was displayed in front of the workshop, for the workshop beneficiaries, but also for all EMERGING Valley participants.

New services to connect tech hubs in Europe – Mediterranean – Africa

THE NEXT SOCIETY also took advantage of EMERGING Valley to promote two new services for business accelerators during a morning of Speed dating meetings between Tech Hubs from Europe, the Mediterranean and Africa organised by THE NEXT SOCIETY with the European Commission’s DG Research and the Aix-Marseille French Tech network.

This session, which brought together nearly fifty accelerators, offered everyone the opportunity to introduce themselves during 2-minute rounds, before individual meetings between accelerators.

Mathias Fillon, THE NEXT SOCIETY coordinator, presented during this session the soft-landing system launched in partnership with the Maghreb Start-Up Network initiated by the World Bank. The aim is to enable entrepreneurs on the southern shore of the Mediterranean to experiment with another market through a short expatriation in a Tech Hub. He also presented the manager exchange program between Tech Hubs for South Mediterranean accelerators, to allow experience sharing between them.