Côte d’Ivoire, Linda Nanan VALLEE : “We want to create value, jobs and improve people’s quality of life”

Interview by Mérième Alaoui

Could you introduce yourself to our readers and tell us about the Fondation Jeunesse Numérique that you run?    

My name is Dr Linda Nanan VALLEE and I’m a research professor at the Ecole supérieure africain des tech et de l’info in Côte d’Ivoire, a school under the supervision of the Ministry in charge of the digital economy. I’m also the executive director of the Fondation Jeunesse Numérique (Digital Youth Foundation), which was created in 2016 by the Ministry of the Economy and Digital Affairs to carry out 4 main missions, including raising awareness of digital entrepreneurship among young people in Côte d’Ivoire and identifying innovative project leaders. We need to find them first through calls for projects and then support them with incubation, acceleration, research and innovation, trying to improve our African startup ecosystem by lobbying on draft laws, legal and regulatory frameworks by trying to adapt them to our environment.

How is Côte d’Ivoire’s digital ecosystem evolving? What are its strengths and weaknesses?

What’s important now is that all the players work in synergy. We need a comprehensive plan. We also need to avoid duplication and use our human, logistical and financial resources to achieve our goals together. That’s the most important thing. We need to streamline things, taking into account each other’s capabilities. All this has to be done in harmony.

At the Africa Tech stage (Vivatech 2023), the Ivorian Ministry of Communications and the Digital Economy presented the Program for the Support and Development of Startups (PADS), which is one of our ministry’s six priority programs. It’s important that this sector is included. Today, the development of start-ups is a key element if we want to increase the digital share of GDP and enable accelerated development, as we were able to do with mobile telephony by skipping stages.

Today, PADS puts a lot of emphasis on access to finance, especially pre-seed and seed finance, and on building local capacity. We need to strengthen the skills within our companies. We shouldn’t have to rely solely on external skills to develop our businesses. And even in deep tech, AI, blockchain, the Internet of Things and cybersecurity, we need to have a pool of local skills. That’s the key. And, of course, market access, which we must improve so as to make its processes transparent and accessible to all.

How do you support start-ups in Côte d’Ivoire, with what objectives and what impact?

Ultimately, our goal is to create value and jobs, and to increase the digital sector’s contribution to Côte d’Ivoire’s overall GDP. All the projects we select for the Foundation are led by young Ivorians. We can have mixed teams, with an Ivorian co-founder and a co-founder from another country. What’s very important in information and communication technologies is the presence of innovation, which is not necessarily technological, and a social impact. At the end of the day, we want to improve people’s quality of life.

This support includes financial support.  What criteria do you use and how much support do you give?

At the Foundation level, we experimented just once, in 2017-2018, with an end-of-startup and pre-seed exercise, where we actually had a modest envelope of 50 million CFA francs. It was distributed unevenly but fairly among 25 start-ups, according to their needs, their stage of development and the existence of a waiting market. For example, we provide pre-seed financing to a start-up that already has a market but needs material. But it is not our role to finance. In Côte d’Ivoire, we have a one-stop shop (the Guichet unique de développement des entreprises), which was launched six months ago. It is responsible for financing SMEs and start-ups, as well as providing guarantees to facilitate access to loans from commercial banks.

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