A former professional judoka, Stéphane Nomis is a French entrepreneur and CEO of Ippon Technologies, a cloud, data, and digital consulting firm based in France, the United States, Australia, Russia, and Morocco. Through his Ippon Foundation, he aims to reduce the digital divide on the African continent in collaboration with Didier Drogba.
Can you tell us about your Ippon Foundation?
In 2017, we created the Ippon Foundation, a foundation dedicated to sport and education. We want to combat the digital divide by creating computer schools and funding digital classrooms on the continent. African youth represent an opportunity for the continent's future in terms of development. Thanks to a network of consultants, we are setting up digital classrooms in schools and training local teaching teams on the hardware and software installed. We have carried out projects in Cameroon, Senegal, Ivory Coast, and more recently in Togo.
All our projects are developed in conjunction with the Didier Drogba Foundation. Our collaboration began with a discussion with Didier Drogba during the last World Cup final in Russia. Since then, we have been developing projects and partnerships between his eponymous foundation and ours.
What motivated the creation of this foundation?
When I started developing my activities in Morocco, I began my discovery of Africa. My experiences made me realize the lack of training in different countries. Based on this observation, I decided to create computer schools to help improve the education system. So we started opening schools in Casablanca, Rabat, and then in several countries across the continent.
You recently launched a project in TOGO. What exactly is it?
Our latest project in Togo, in the city of Lomé, has enabled us to digitize two schools in the country: La Ruche and Bouba, which we have equipped with 20 computers. This project was carried out in collaboration with the Didier Drogba Foundation and the Vemianou Association. These two primary schools will now be able to integrate digital technology into their teaching. Thanks to this equipment, each school will be able to offer two hours of lessons per week to teach the curriculum and raise awareness of IT tools.
In which other countries will you continue these initiatives?
Our goal was to focus on Africa and open around ten schools in 2019, spread across several countries. Soon, again in collaboration with the Didier Drogba Foundation, we will launch two new digital classroom projects in Côte d'Ivoire, outside the city of Abidjan, to reach more rural areas.
Looking ahead, we are driven by the ambition to open around 100 schools by the end of 2024.