Orange has launched two accelerator programmes in the Ivory Coast and Israel bringing the number of the network’s accelerators spread across the continent to four.
The “Orange Fab Ivory Coast” and “Fab Israel” programme, is a pillar of the Group’s open innovation approach, reflecting on the determination of Orange to support the new digital players and help them grow by accelerating innovation.
The aim of Orange Fab Ivory Coast is to facilitate the development of start-ups in the Ivorian economic system. In order to be eligible, the start-ups 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 startups, which were selected from 86 submissions, will be supported for 3 months in the development of their product and their business. They will benefit from the valuable mentoring of fifty 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.
“With the opening of two new accelerators in Israel and Ivory Coast, the network of Orange Fab is now present on four continents. We believe it is our role to support, internationally, the growth of start-ups, which is a win-win situation”, declares Mari-Noëlle Jégo-Laveissière, Senior Executive Vice President of Innovation, Marketing and Technologies of Orange.
ICT4Dev.ci: a platform for managing agricultural cooperatives, Samartsell: a management solution for points of sale, Sycelim: responds to the needs of the insurance and healthcare programmes for asset management, billing management and pension payments, Sycelim which supports the management of the patient’s follow-up: registration of benefits, conditions, prescriptions and medical dispensations pharmacies and Sportif 225: a sports web agency whose main activity is the sale of web and mobile services adapted to the sport environment are the startups chosen from Ivory Coast.
Orange in conjunction with African partners and of the ecosystem of developers in Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Mali and Senegal has organized an API challenge this summer via Orange Partner, the programme for developers exposing Orange APIs.
Developers received the SMS, USSD and credit airtime API’s 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.
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