Cote d’Ivoire Deep Dive Part IV: A regional hub for Francophone countries
Welcome back to the final edition of our four-part Deep Dive into the Cote d’Ivoire tech ecosystem and the historical factors that shaped its current state. Where Part I and II covered Cote d’Ivoire’s socio-economic past, and Part III considered its more recent history and nascent tech beginning, Part IV will assess the current state of the ecosystem, its essential players, its role in the broader regional ecosystem, and its future growth prospects.
What stands out about Cote d’Ivoire’s ecosystem is that despite all the aforementioned structural challenges, it attracts the most startups and scaleups from its neighbouring Francophone countries.
Cote d’Ivoire counts as its advantages a specific availability of capital in diversified forms (DFIs, corporate, VC and PE, microfinance) and a network of corporates involved in stimulating the ecosystem while maintaining a sustained demand for tech/software products. Surprisingly, startup support organisations have been missing from the picture — certainly an Ivorian exception — but they are now stepping up, with many corporates launching set-ups in the country, such as CMA-CGM in the freight industry.
The most recent shop opening in the country is M-Studio, an ambitious venture studio led by serial entrepreneur Leslie Ossété, Cédric Mangeaud — co-founder of Saviu Ventures — and Clyde Fakhoury, general manager of PFO Africa, a PE fund focused on infrastructure. M-Studio’s thesis is simple: reproduce winning mobile-based business models from other regions or continents that target the informal economy. As of January 2024, M-Studio is expected to reach its target of creating 10 startups within its first year of activity.
The venture studio is also engaging in ecosystem-building activities, hosting a large number of ecosystem events, taking part in many programs and training sessions and federating the ecosystem through different communities.
Among them is the VC-friendly community, a program that is free and accessible to all VCs interested in knowing more about the ecosystem in Cote d’Ivoire. M-Studio’s team offers a coworking space in their office and an updated list of ecosystem stakeholders they can facilitate meetings with.
Local founders, expat advantage, and fintech’s prominence
The entrepreneurial sphere is clearly divided into two types of founder profiles. One is local founders. Part of the pipeline at the concept stage faces a glass ceiling, preventing most local founders from attaining the traction that would make them investable from pre-seed and above. A lot of capacity-building access to networks and markets is needed for founders at this stage, while universities currently have poor entrepreneurial curriculums. Moreover, the ratio of single sign-on (SSOs) per founder is meagre, excluding them from the entrepreneurial culture they need to scale meaningfully.
On the other hand, most (fast) growing startups that made it to market are led by expat founders — mostly from France — or members of the diaspora returning to Cote d’Ivoire with a deepened background (second-time founders or past experience in the industry). This last group logically attracts all VC funding in the country.
From an industry perspective, fintech is particularly dynamic and concentrates the majority of VC funding…
You can read the full story here…
Abderrahmane Chaoui is an African ecosystem researcher, consultant, and writer.
Learn more about Founders Factory Africa.
