The World Bank has published its “2021 Migration and Development report”. In it, the institution revealed the top 10 sub-Saharan countries in Africa that are destinations for remittances from other continents. The ranking which was dominated by Nigeria and Ghana, also included 3 countries from the French-speaking area. These are Senegal, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Mali. They received $2.6 billion, $1.9 billion and $1 billion respectively.
Senegal
Senegal is in fourth place in Africa, just ahead of the DRC which is fifth and far from its neighbor Mali which closes the ranking. The ranking also includes Kenya (third), Somalia (sixth), South Sudan (seventh), Zimbabwe (eighth) and Uganda (ninth).
“It is estimated that remittances to the region fell by 12.5% in 2020. This drop is almost entirely due to a 27.7% drop in remittances to Nigeria, which alone accounted for more. 40% of remittances to the region. Excluding Nigeria, remittances to sub-Saharan Africa increased 2.3%, demonstrating resilience in times of crisis, “the report read.
senegal remittances Africa senegal remittances Africa
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer who has advised startups across Africa on issues such as startup funding (Venture Capital, Debt financing, private equity, angel investing etc), taxation, strategies, etc. He also has special focus on the protection of business or brands’ intellectual property rights ( such as trademark, patent or design) across Africa and other foreign jurisdictions. He is well versed on issues of ESG (sustainability), media and entertainment law, corporate finance and governance. He is also an award-winning writer
A great way to end the week! Following the appointment of Nigeria’s ex-finance minister Ngozi Okonjo Iweala to head the World Trade Organisation earlier this week — first time a woman and an African would be heading the 26-year-old organisation — another African, Makhtar Diop from Senegal, has been appointed to head one of the world’s leading investment firms and the private sector arm of the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation (IFC). This is the first time someone from Africa has headed the Washington-based institution.
Former Finance Minister, Makhtar Diop
“Thrilled to share the news of my appointment as Managing Director and Executive Vice President of the IFC — International Finance Corporation. Looking forward to mobilizing private capital and creating markets to overcome #COVID19-related challenges. The private sector has a crucial role to play in reviving economic growth and paving the way for a more inclusive and sustainable future,” Makhtar Diop said.
A Look At Makhtar Diop
Diop, a Senegalese national and former Minister of Economy and Finance, is currently serving as Vice-President of Infrastructure for the World Bank, where he is leading the Bank’s global efforts to create successful infrastructure for inclusive and sustainable development in developed and emerging markets. In this position, Diop oversees the vital work of the Bank in the energy and transport sectors, digital development and IFC’s efforts through public-private partnerships to bring more quality infrastructure services to communities.
Diop worked for six years as World Bank Vice President for the Africa Region prior to his current appointment, where he oversaw a significant expansion of the bank’s work in Africa and the delivery of a record $70 billion in commitments.
Diop has worked as Country Director of the World Bank twice — for Brazil and for Kenya, Eritrea and Somalia. He has had interfaces with both the public and private sectors, beginning his career in the banking sector. Diop also has first-hand experience leading structural reforms in support of the private sector, including his position as Senegal’s Minister of Economy and Finance. At the International Monetary Fund, Diop worked as an economist. And he has worked as Director of Economy, Private Sector & Infrastructure for the Latin America and Caribbean Region of the World Bank.
Makhtar has also been named one of the world’s 100 most influential Africans. He received the University of California, Berkeley’s prestigious Regents’ Lectureship Award in 2015. He holds advanced economics and finance degrees.
The appointment will become effective on 1st March, 2021.
“Makhtar Diop has deep development and finance experience and a career of energetic leadership and service to developing countries in both public and private sectors,” said World Bank Group President David Malpass. “Makhtar’s skills at IFC will help the World Bank Group continue our rapid response to the global crisis and help build a green, resilient, inclusive recovery. We need business climates and thriving businesses that attract investment, create jobs and foster the scaling up of low carbon electricity and transportation, clean water, infrastructure, digital services, and the wide range of development success that are key to our mission of poverty reduction and shared prosperity.”
Some Hope For African Startups Looking For Funding?
With Diop’s appointment, there may be some significant increase in funding from the IFC to African startups, especially those in French-speaking African countries — like his — which have continued to lag behind in terms of venture capital funding.
According to the World Bank, Diop is a committed supporter of Africa and global sustainable growth, who has led efforts to increase access to affordable and sustainable energy and to foster an enabling climate for innovation and the adoption of technology. Being a World Bank Vice President for the Africa Region for six years prior to his current appointment, Diop has adequate knowledge of the funding needs of African businesses, especially startups. And so, the hope of his increased intervention in the African startup ecosystem will be expectedly high.
As far back as 2015, the IFC has been very active within the African startup space, investing in Kenyan logistics startup Twiga Foods; Nigerian ecommerce startup Tradeport; South African lending startup Lulalend; Nigerian logistics startup Kobo360; Egypt’s healthtech startup Vezeeta; Grainpulse, among others.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer who has advised startups across Africa on issues such as startup funding (Venture Capital, Debt financing, private equity, angel investing etc), taxation, strategies, etc. He also has special focus on the protection of business or brands’ intellectual property rights ( such as trademark, patent or design) across Africa and other foreign jurisdictions. He is well versed on issues of ESG (sustainability), media and entertainment law, corporate finance and governance. He is also an award-winning writer
Efforts to employ innovation in the management of waste disposal in Senegal got a positive nod with the government’s decision to promote waste recovery in the country. The project which will help in curbing excessive waste and mitigate pollution will see to the construction of a recovery factory in Senegal’s Kaolack region. Government sources say it will modernize waste management in this region of central-western Senegal.
According to Senegal’s Minister of Urbanism, Housing and Hygiene, the project targets to ensure that the country achieves a zero-waste status, thus the reason behind tagging it a “Zero Waste” project. This is one of the innovative initiatives of President Macky Sall of Senegal which forms part of a bigger project to help to mobilize the Senegalese people behind a strategy of social transformation, public hygiene, and cleanliness.
Within the framework of this new project, a monitoring and awareness unit of the Senegalese Ministry of Urbanism will stay for 15 days in Kaolack, to exchange and share information on “improving the living environment of the population”. The “zero waste” operation is in line with the “Cleaning day” program launched by the President on January 4, 2020. Within this framework, 250 palm trees and a hundred flower boxes have been set up in several communes in the Kaolack region. The administrative center of the region has a bad reputation, often described as “the dirtiest city in the country”.
It is in this context that the Metropolitan Agency for Household Waste (Syctom) in Île-de-France and the European Union (EU) have been supporting waste recovery in Senegal for several years. For example, the Training and Awareness Project on Sorting and Collection of Household Waste was launched and subsidized to the tune of 35 million CFA francs (€52,468) by Syctom (also Mixed Central Union for the Treatment of Household Waste) in Guédiawaye, in the suburbs of Dakar in 2015. It will eventually make it possible to train 800 to 1,000 children in 10 schools on basic hygiene and the importance of selective sorting and waste collection. At least 15 sports and cultural associations and women’s groups will be sensitized.
The IWWA project “Integrated waste management in western Africa”, financed by the European Union (EU), has also addressed the issue of solid waste management in Senegal. The project has strengthened formal and informal networks in the domain of waste management and the implementation of measures to positively influence solid waste management in the country.
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
Senegal would soon join the league of African countries, such as Tunisia with a law specifically meant for startups. Barring any last minute changes, the Senegal Startup Act will be ready in December, 2019 as the country’s National Assembly gets set to pass the bill into law, after it was passed by the country’s cabinet.
Here Is All You Need To Know
Seizing the momentum and capitalizing on support from relevant public institutions, in July 2018 key ecosystem players in Senegal including start-ups, hubs, and investors launched a Policy Hackathon115 to draft in a participatory, bottom-updriven manner a Senegal Start-up Act, which covers areas, such as financing mechanisms, fiscality, access to digital infrastructure, skills and training opportunities, tax policies, or labeling of start-ups, the promotion of data collection and sharing so that entrepreneurs can develop better business plans.
The draft was submitted to the authorities, who are strongly committed to follow the examples of other economies, notably Israel (1991), United States (2011), France (2013), India (2016), and Tunisia (2018), in adopting specific start-up focused regulations.
President Macky Sall’s Council of Ministers early November, 2019 considered and adopted the bill, and it would now go before the National Assembly in December.
Once passed, this move would make Senegal the second African country to pass such an Act, after Tunisia.
“I think that in a few years the question will be, “how many countries don’t have Startup Acts?”,” Jon Stever, co-founder and managing director of Impact Hub Kigali and catalyst at i4Policy said. “This year, Smart Africa’s board, comprising 26 African heads of state, requested the Tunisian government to package and share learnings from their Startup Act. Moreover, the work of i4Policy signatories to support policy reforms is multiplying, as are our resources to support the work.”
The Senegalese start-up ecosystem remains fragile and embryonic and its further development is inhibited by several critical constraints, particularly by insufficient support at the regulatory level.
Despite important incipient progress, Senegal still ranks 140th of 190 economies in Doing Business 2018 and 103rd of 137 countries in the 2018 Global Entrepreneurship Index, suggesting that deeper reforms and additional investments are warranted to fully transform the country’s business environment and entrepreneurship ecosystem.
Specific measures are necessary to support start-ups that face significant and, in many ways, unique challenges that limit scale-up opportunities. These challenges include high initial investments, long development periods to break even, the necessity to protect intellectual property, insufficient material assets, impediments to access finance, and weak access to markets.
Senegal’s Startup Act Will Be Similar to the Tunisian Startup Act.
Unarguably, Tunisia leads other African countries in bold startup legislations. The Tunisian Startup Act, passed in May, 2018, also reveals the following similarities with the Malian Startup Act.
Tunisian Startup Act defines startups as an entity having legal existence not exceeding eight (08) years from the date of its constitution,while Mali’s makes provision only for startups less than four years.
More than two-thirds (2/3) of Tunisian startups’ capital must be natural persons, venture capital investment companies, collective investment funds, investment, seed money and any other investment body according to the legislation in force or by foreign Startups to qualify as startups under the Act.
The business model envisaged by the Tunisian Startup Act is one that is highly innovative, utilizing cutting-edge technology.
Under the Act, any individual promoter of a Startup, public agent or employee of a private company, may benefit from the right to Startup Leave for creation of a Startup for a period of one year renewable once
Any promoter of a Startup may benefit from a Startup scholarship for a duration of one (01) year. Only three (03) shareholders and full-time employees in the relevant Startup may however benefit from the scholarship awarded.
Young graduates who create startups are free from taxation for three years.
The profits from the sale of the securities relating to the shares in the Startups are exempt from the capital gains tax.
The Era of Startup Act
The first specific startup law globally was passed in Italy in 2012, and Africa is increasingly catching on. A host of countries, with Mali also at an advanced stage, are working towards Startup Acts.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based Lawyer with special focus on Business Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Entertainment and Technology Law. He is also an award-winning writer. Working for notable organizations so far has exposed him to some of industry best practices in business, finance strategies, law, dispute resolution, and data analytics both in Nigeria and across the world
The Senegalese General Delegation for the Acceleration of Entrepreneurship for Women and Young People (DER), under the auspices of the Presidency of the Republic of Senegal, signed a partnership agreement with GreenTec Capital Partners the premier German investor into African Start-ups. The purpose of the agreement is the foundation of the first regional Venture Building Center in Africa to tackle investment challenges by providing investment tickets between € 10,000 and € 500,000 for entrepreneurs at the cusp of their growth stages.
The needs of Start-ups, MSMEs, and SMEs in Africa today revolve around a balanced combination of financing and operational support.
The entrepreneurial boom and the entrepreneurial spirit on the African continent are primarily supported by the growth of new ecosystem stakeholders such as incubators, hubs, and accelerators. This momentum is nevertheless hindered by the systemic operational deficiencies that still exist within the ecosystem today. Additionally, the Start-ups are most often not well prepared to use conventional financing vehicles such as venture capital.
The agreement was signed by the Minister Delegate for Entrepreneurship, Papa Amadou Sarr, and the CEO and co-founder of the German investment company, GreenTec Capital Partners, Erick Yong, joining the mutual ambitions of the two entities to the benefit of young Senegalese entrepreneurs by providing financing of the digital sector. Strengthening the operational capacities of Start-ups, and setting up a common infrastructure to enable startups to develop sustainably.
A new and better-structured ecosystem is needed to enable entrepreneurs to move efficiently from the proof-of-concept stage with low revenues (post-accelerator) to a stage of sustainable growth, thereby overcoming the “valley of death.”
The relevance of this partnership is rooted in the alignment and the sharing of resources between different actors, ranging from the public and private sectors and including development banks and civil society organizations. The joint initiative will further enable entrepreneurs with high potential to get better access to the support they need to grow.
Accessing support in the form of personalized operational assistance will create value for entrepreneurs who have matured past the phase in which incubators and accelerators have added value. This will help to further improve the quality of Start-ups and improve their chances of success.
The guiding principle of this initiative is that Africa must not be a passive observer of its own development, but an active player that invests resources and co-designs the agenda of development. Following this thought, it is in line with the political will of Senegalese President, H.E. Macky Sall, that the Republic of Senegal has decided to integrate the venture building model developed by GreenTec Capital with the coordination of DER.
The DER, created in 2017 and operational since March 2018, has been provided with a budget of $ 5 million per year until 2023 to achieve these goals.
DER, the Senegalese General Delegation for the Acceleration of Entrepreneurship for Women and Young People is an initiative of the President of the Republic of Senegal, H.E. Macky Sall. Its priority is to support and finance Senegalese entrepreneurs in the Senegalese National Development Plan’s priority sectors, which are agriculture, the digital economy, tourism, crafts, services, and several others.
The collaboration between the Republic of Senegal and GreenTec Capital Partners coincides with the ambitions of the French initiative digital Africa led by Karim Sy. Mr. Sy has guaranteed to lend the full support of the French initiative to this new ecosystem building center, which is based on the sharing of resources and the catalyzing of actors in the African entrepreneurship ecosystem.
Through its innovation fund, the DER has already invested in 44 Senegalese startups in 2018, with ticket sizes ranging from € 10,000 to € 100,000. In 2019, the DER aims to support more than 150 digital Startups and SMEs, by investing more than 10 million euros, while supporting an additional twenty Start-ups with the GreenTec Capital venture-building model.
It is not a coincidence that the day of the signature of the agreement between the DER and GreenTec coincides with a groundbreaking ceremony for the construction of “The DER Innovation HUB.” The objective is to position Senegal as a major player in the field of innovation on a regional level. The Hub will host major technology companies, innovators, incubators, and accelerators… and of course the GreenTec Capital Partners team.
The agreement also includes the establishment of the new GreenTec Capital regional office in Dakar. Designed to support and develop the operations of the largest investment structure in Germany for African start-ups in Francophone Africa. The local team will help raise the critical operational capabilities of companies to help make them more attractive to international investors.
In the last four years, GreenTec Capital’s investment model has already proven successful in 10 African countries – 4 of them in Francophone Africa, among them Rwanda, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Benin, and several others. Now, this model will be implemented in Senegal contributing to a new investment ecosystem adapted to the structural specificities of entrepreneurship on the African continent.
Due to its high adaptation to the African context, the innovative investment model is scalable across the continent. It provides opportunities to design and develop new innovative solutions formed by international partnerships that can benefit the entire continent.
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.
Goree Island which was a huge slave holding facility at the centre of the European slave trade from the sixteenth century until 1848.
The importance of this historical site has made it a Mecca of sorts for those who want to connect with Africa’s past, to understand some of the historical dynamics that brought this continent where it is today.
The recent group to visit the site are businessmen from across the continent of Africa under the auspices of the African Energy Chamber and several oil executives who took time off their conference in Dakar for a symbolic visit to Senegal’s Goree Island today, southeast of the capital Dakar.
Goree Island was a huge slave holding facility and at the centre of the European slave trade from the sixteenth century until 1848, when France abolished slavery. Countless African slaves passed through the island for centuries on their way to the US, Haiti, and Cuba. The oldest building on the island, the House of Slaves, is a reminder of the inhuman conditions in which African slaves were treated for over three centuries. The whole island was inscribed on the Unesco World Heritage list in 1978.
“Slavery was a sin and a crime against humanity. The Chamber is looking forward to working with various African civil society groups to fight issues of modern-day slavery. It starts with us creating an environment where all are treated with fairness, love, and equity,” said NJ Ayuk CEO of Centurion Law Group and Executive Chair of the African Energy Chamber during the visit.
Oil executives were told how slaves were chained at the neck and arms with a heavy iron ball attached. Many of the slaves were released just once a day from their cells which measured just 2.6m by 2.6m, each containing between 15 to 20 men. The ill and the dead were thrown into the sea for the sharks to feed on.
Families were split up with women and children each being kept in a separate part of the slave house. For young women, there was one means of escape. Any that became pregnant by the slave masters were released either on the island or in the town of Saint Louis.
“Visiting Goree Island should remind us that slavery continues when we shrink civic freedoms, encourage legislation that stifles dissent, stand idly by on rising populism that has stirred xenophobia, limit opportunities for Africans and women in oil and gas and put a blind eye on African families that continue to earn unworthy wages,” added Ayuk.
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.
