Contribute collectively to Africa's development

I recently had the opportunity to share my vision of the economic development of Africa at the Paris Europlace international conference on the theme New Frontiers in Finance.

Africa is a continent facing several major challenges, but challenges that also bring potential opportunities. On the one hand is demographic growth and the intensification of urbanisation: according to the latest United Nations report, the population of Sub-Saharan Africa is set to double between now and 2050, with half of African citizens registered as city-dwellers (versus one third at present). On the other hand, global warming is intensifying: Africa has the lowest carbon emissions among the world’s regions and yet it risks suffering most from the effects of climate change. The IPCC report warns of the impacts of increasing temperatures, including greater food insecurity and a lack of water, and the negative impact on the growth of some countries forcing populations to seek refuge in other countries.

I firmly believe that Europe and Africa’s destinies are closely linked and as Europeans, entrepreneurs and citizens, it is our duty to contribute at our level to the local and sustainable development of African economies (see Article: Europe has much at stake in Africa).

These challenges of course must first and foremost be faced by the continent's own countries. Africa is a continent of contrasts, and is undergoing profound changes. Over the last decade, we have seen it become a little less dependent on its significant raw material reserves and a little more driven by its own growth: the emergence of a consuming and enterprising middle class that creates regional companies and pan-African leaders. From this perspective, recent initiatives to promote the integration of pan-African trade are promising, reflecting a drive by local governments to improve the way they organise and work together. Africa's development will also require stable political institutions, with effective processes of democratic transition.

Above all, Africa needs huge investment. According to various estimates by the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), Africa’s funding needs stand at between 130 and 170 billion dollars per year, of which it has raised only half at present. Africa is facing an “enormous” and “growing” funding deficit that warrants unprecedented mobilisation of international technical, human and financial resources. Various public players are addressing the issue, but public bodies are not enough to cover all needs, private players also have a major role to play. 

Societe Generale has been operating in Africa for more than a hundred years; today we are present in 19 African countries, with four million customers, including 150,000 business clients, more than 1,000 branches and 12,000 dedicated staff members. Africa's development is a collective challenge to which we can and want to contribute responsibly and sustainably. Our “Contribution to the sustainable development of Africa” is one of six major CSR policy strands that we have defined, and more broadly it is one of the Group's growth pillars. 

We launched the Grow with Africa initiative to put an even greater spotlight on the need for responsible development on the African continent. Through this initiative, we want to contribute collectively to the sustainable development of Africa, both in partnership with the territories and local players and with international experts, through dialogue, listening and sharing resources and innovative approaches.

This initiative also incorporates the rollout of the UN sustainable development goals across the continent, and aims to foster local experimentation with a view to duplicating successful projects in several countries and industrialising them as part of an ongoing process of improvement and a policy of complete transparency of results between the programme partners.

Through Grow With Africa, we want to support the development of SMEs in Africa by committing an additional four billion euros of outstandings loans over the next five years, and to finance vital infrastructures for energy supply, transportation and mobility, water and waste management, and the development of sustainable cities. To this end, we intend to double our team responsible for structured financing in Sub-Saharan Africa between now and the end of 2019 and to increase infrastructure financing in Africa by 20% over three years. 

The other two strands of this initiative are the implementation of innovative financing for agricultural activities and the energy sector and the creation of a services offering that can meet the needs of a growing population that will require financial inclusion notably through our YUP wallet, which boasts a total of nearly 900,000 customers.

As a bank, we finance projects and facilitate investment, financing, all of the activities on which the future is built, whether infrastructures, technologies, progress for the environment, health or education. 

Our commitment to this continent can also be seen in our support for women entrepreneurs, and notably the Women in Africa initiative in which I recently participated in Marrakesh. Our Foundation, for its part, supports nearly 100 African projects in 14 countries, helping to combat discrimination in education and professional integration. Its objective is to favour human capital by working with three key partners: Care, Terres en Mêlées and Simplon (include links) and by working closely on the ground to create sustainable momentum. We have decided to allocate 20% of the Foundation's budget to Africa (versus 15% at present) so that we can support more projects. In Spring 2019, we held our first Pan-African Charity Awards, a major call for projects by all our entities. We selected and are supporting three additional projects in Morocco, Senegal and the Ivory Coast.

We also recently won, for the first time, the Best Bank in Africa award for corporate responsibility from Euromoney.

All of these initiatives highlight once again our determination to be a key player in the sustainable and responsible development of Africa, both economically and financially and in terms of access to employment and education.