Startup accelerator programme launched in Ivory Coast

Mari-Noëlle Jégo-Laveissière, Senior Executive Vice President of Innovation, Marketing and Technologies of Orange.

Four startups of Orange Fab Ivory Coast

Four startups were selected from 86 submissions:

• ICT4Dev.ci: a platform for managing agricultural cooperatives composed of an information web portal (Lôr Bouôr); a distribution system for the agricultural prices via mobile (Djori Djori); a vocal booth (Djassi); and a virtual market.
  
• Samartsell: a management solution for points of sale with the following functions: remote management and automation of inventory, billing with mobile devices and selling of airtime from cash registers in order to solve the problems of currency.
  
• Sycelim: responds to the needs of the insurance and healthcare programmes for asset management, billing management and pension payments. Sycelim also supports the management of the patient's follow-up: registration of benefits, conditions, prescriptions and medical dispensations pharmacies.
  
• Sportif 225: a sports web agency which main activity is the sale of web and mobile services adapted to the sport environment, the production of sport contents and the creation of sport events.

The aim of Orange Fab Ivory Coast is to facilitate the development of startups in the Ivorian economic system.

In order to be eligible, the startups must already have a product/service in one of the following fields: customer experience, digital solutions for the company connected objects, social networks and community services, e-commerce, everyday life, local content, mobile payment and money transfer, e-education, e-agriculture and e-health.

The selected startups will be supported for three months in the development of their product and their business. They will benefit from the valuable mentoring of 50 coaches, including Orange mentors, entrepreneurs and local academics. Moreover, six workshops will be offered to them. They will also have the opportunity to test their products in the customers' testing center of Orange in Abidjan, have access to Orange's APIs and will receive financial support in the form of a convertible note of 15,000 euros. They will also benefit from workspaces and from communication services made available by Orange Ivory Coast and the Technocentre of Orange, based in Abidjan.

Finally they can participate in two demo days (in Abidjan and Paris) and two investment forums.

API challenge

Orange has also attracted the interest of African partners and of the ecosystem of developers in Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Mali and Senegal by organising an API challenge this summer via Orange Partner, the programme for developers exposing Orange APIs. Developers received the SMS, USSD and credit airtime APIs and were challenged to develop various applications for different sectors (agriculture, transportation, voting and games).

Orange will use the feedback from developers in order to launch an API portfolio in 2015, dedicated to the AMEA region, starting with the launch of the SMS API.