A few days ago, entrepreneur Karim SY announced his departure from Digital Africa. Today, the initiative is changing direction and committing to a resilient Africa.
Read also: Karim Sy leaves Digital Africa
Launched in 2018, Digital Africa is an initiative created to support digital innovation in Africa. Designed as a label dedicated to supporting startups on the continent, Digital Africa is the result of the French government's financial commitment to the development of African ecosystems. At the third edition of the Vivatech trade show, Emmanuel Macron announced a €65 million commitment through a specific instrument deployed by the French Development Agency via the Digital Africa platform to support startup projects.
Today, a new team has been appointed to lead the initiative, represented in part by Kizito Okechukwu as vice president, founder of Campus 2 ON SLOANE, and co-chair of the Global Entrepreneurship Network Africa. In addition, Digital Africa and its members have chosen new directions to place tech entrepreneurs at the heart of Africa's economic recovery in the aftermath of the health crisis.
These new directions are centered around three concrete projects to be rolled out by the end of June 2020:
- The Resilient Summer School: a capacity-building program for young champions
- Data 4 Digital Africa: an open data infrastructure enabling entrepreneurs and tech solution creators to test their models with open source data;
- Africa Next Round: a program aimed at facilitating co-investments in innovative, hyper-growth African companies.
For Rima Le Coguic,
Director for Africa at the French Development Agency: "The vision promoted by Digital Africa is that of an Africa where digital transformation enables inclusive development and where tech solutions improve quality of life, support the real economy, and gradually become global benchmarks
."
Source: press release