BNP Paribas, proud partner of the African startup ecosystem.

When we think about innovation and startups, we may think first about Europe or the USA, about London, Berlin, Tel Aviv or Paris. But a couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to meet with our African teams and I was very impressed by their commitment, inventiveness and enthusiasm. I saw people ready to dare, to try, to challenge our organisations and ways of working to upgrade our models. Their confidence to strive for innovation and their entrepreneurial spirit was inspiring. I am convinced that their character reflects the deep transformation of Africa today, and that it is a continent that definitely counts in the significant rise of the global startups ecosystem. 

Helping African entrepreneurs is key to fostering this new and dynamic ecosystem. The goal is not only to develop this continent economically, often overlooked, but also to build a fairer, more balanced world, through sustainable growth. That’s why at BNP Paribas, we develop strategic initiatives towards African entrepreneurs and projects owners. 

In the north of the continent for example, we build a strong partnership between BMCI, our Moroccan bank, and the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Morocco, the “Kluster CFCIM”, to develop local startups and promote entrepreneurship, with an acceleration programme based on 3 pillars: equipment, financing and individual support (mentoring, training, etc). Projects selected among the 150 applications will have the opportunity to be incubated in Casablanca during 18 months. 

Besides, the BDSI, our African IT hub, in association with BMCI and the banks of WAEMU (West African Economic and Monetary Union), launched the HackDays, a BNP Paribas open innovation programme in Africa in association with #TheFactory Casablanca. This competition gathered BNP Paribas employees, students and startups, from several West African countries around several topics as “the agency of the future” or “the self-care customer” for example. The selected projects will be developed within the “Cantine Digitale”, the BDSI lab, which aims to accelerate the digital transformation in Africa, thanks to the implementation of new customer-centric approaches. 

Our South African subsidiary, RCS, also became in 2017, one of the 5 co-sponsors of the 1st African program of #Startupbootcamp, in order to foster job creation, support small business growth and diversity and create more value to our customers by offering cheaper and faster solutions and services. After receiving more than 500 applications from 40 countries around big data, e-commerce, insurance, blockchain, payment solutions etc, 10 startups were incubated in Cape Town for 3 months. Finally, this led to the signature of 32 corporate agreements for this first batch, and the creation of 2 solutions in production for RCS: StriderTech – automatization of 50% of manual income verifications, and Gotbot – a chatbot on Messenger to increase self-care. Chosen projects among the 1,000 applications received for batch 2, will start incubation in September. 

We are also involved in Africa through our investments in impact funds, notably with our participation in I&P, an impact investing group fully dedicated to Sub-Saharan Africa. Our contribution will enable to create investment funds in 10 African countries, among them Comoe Capital, the first impact fund dedicated to the financing and support of Ivoirian SMEs and startups. 

I am looking forward to see what’s next for all those projects and continue working with African entrepreneurs! 

I strongly believe that to partner with African startups and to capitalise on promising local talents will help us build innovative, sustainable and digital Banks in Africa, and to develop the local economy while offering the best services to our clients.