Following the recent events that have affected the organization of Digital Africa, we, the employees of Digital Africa, wish to speak out publicly and collectively to restore the facts and actions that led to the current blockage.
We have all joined the initiative driven by the deep conviction that the approach proposed by Digital Africa, new and ambitious, makes it possible to promote “made in Africa” innovations and to contribute to a new dynamic of cooperation between the African continent, France and Europe.
Our team reflects a great diversity and richness due to our geographical origins and our skills (Rwanda, Senegal, Morocco, Tunisia, Ivory Coast, France, Germany).
Since spring 2020, we have designed and started to deploy financial or non-financial programs with our African and European partners. By favoring action based on programs, the impact of which must be regularly measured, it is a new philosophy of development aid and technology that we wanted to embody.
We wanted to be more inclusive as well; our Resilient Summer School (2020) brought together more than 1,800 entrepreneurs and its content was widely disseminated. We also had to be agile and responsive. Bridge Fund by Digital Africa, launched in November, is an innovative financing device that has enabled more than 150 African startups to apply for emergency loans. AfricaNext, launched in July, brings together more than 70 African and international investors every quarter to share co-investment opportunities.
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We wanted to give voice to a new generation of African tech “doers” through events organized by partners or via our site resilient.digital-africa.co which contributed news and analyzes to the debate on the conditions. that facilitate the design and scale-up of “made in Africa” solutions.
Faced with the growing importance of the digital sector in the emergence of Africa, we have convinced our partners to renew and increase their financial commitments. For us, it was not just about “more money”: thanks to data sciences and artificial intelligence, we have helped to make public resources better available, better employed, based on expressed needs. .
We have been recruited to implement actions and ask to be judged on our results, which are visible and praised. We have, in a relatively short time, mobilized a large community of partners ready to follow us with enthusiasm to support the digitization of the continent through its youth. Unfortunately, our efforts and those of our partners have been repeatedly blocked by those who paradoxically claim to be supporting the initiative since its inception. In addition, for several months we have been suffering from a governance crisis of rare violence, which endangers the activities launched as well as our work capacities.
The facts are there. All our activity has been at a standstill for 3 months despite our results. In the first years of the initiative’s life, no clear action plan had been proposed. The Board of Directors and the General Assembly have only met once each during this period. Conversely, a strategic orientation plan and a budget were validated by our board of directors and our general assembly in June 2020. Weekly and then monthly office meetings were organized from April 2020 to December 2020, in order to guarantee a transparent monitoring of activities. But the same people who had made opacity a working method nevertheless criticized and attacked us repeatedly when presenting our work.
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Are we discouraged? No. On the contrary, if we have overcome these difficulties, it is with the hope that the crisis will lead to a new horizon. We are exceptionally speaking today to collectively reaffirm our unwavering commitment to the Digital Africa initiative and its mission. Our ambition is simple: to continue to facilitate access to financial and non-financial resources for startups on the continent. Our conviction remains the same: it is possible and necessary to put official development assistance at the service of innovation “made in Africa” likely to scale up and generate massively the jobs that the continent needs.
Our will can be summed up as follows: “to pursue our actions together according to clear and transparent rules of the game, with inclusiveness and agility, to meet the expectations of tech entrepreneurs on the continent”.
(*) Agnès Abastado, Stéphane Allou, Isadora Bigourdan, Mohamed Diabakhate, Inayath Djany, Ayoub Fathi, Stéphan-Eloïse Gras, Aïsha Kadiri, Ali Mnif, Aphrodice Mutangana, Penelope Terranova.
Digital Africa letter Digital Africa letter Digital Africa letter
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry