TECH STARS (1006)
During his medical studies, he stumbled upon a scientific paper that prompted him to streamline health exchange and collaboration. The innovation now helps save lives and earns its founder accolades and awards.
Sedric Degbo (photo) is a Beninese doctor, entrepreneur, and founder of the African Doctors' Exchange Network (REMA). For the entrepreneur, “health exchange and collaboration always save lives.” Therefore, his mission with REMA is to make the exchange and collaboration process more efficient with digitalization.
His network allows remote medical collaboration and facilitates collective intelligence and solidarity between doctors practicing on the African continent. Its mobile platform gives doctors the opportunity to discuss practical cases in real-time with their colleagues for improved medical decisions. Currently, it claims an active community of over 6,000 doctors, most from West Africa.
Sedric got the idea to create REMA in 2016 during a research work when he stumbled upon a scientific paper on medical mistakes in the world.
“The conclusions were really alarming, so I decided out of curiosity to find the data concerning Africa… The figures specified by numerous authors proved that medical mistakes are real public health issues on our continent. An analysis of those figures demonstrates that beyond the organizational challenges of the African health system, the high number of medical mistakes on the continent is due to doctors’ low level of information, their isolation, and the lack of a suitable mechanism to communicate with peers,” he explained in 2020.
Thanks to REMA, the young entrepreneur who worked for Caritas International between 2016 and 2019 has received numerous awards. In 2019, he was awarded the first Inwidays prize in Casablanca and the first BreizhAfrica prize in Paris. He also received the second Afric'Up prize in Tunis. The following year, he received the Covid-19 Solidarity Award from the International Organization of the Francophonie. This year, he is on the Medika Life 50, a list of the 50 most influential voices in the healthcare industry. Since September 2021, he is a member of the executive board of Bluemind Foundation, an NGO making mental healthcare accessible for every African.
Melchior Koba
In 2010, he returned to his native country because of family issues. During that period, he identified needs he could help with and created Famib Group with the ambition of contributing to digital transformation. Some dozen years later, that ambition is still much intact.
Amadou Diawara (photo) is a Franco-Malian computer scientist, an entrepreneur, and the founder of FAMIB Group, a Bamako-based software company. In 2010, he was working as an office manager for WFS (Worldwide Flight Services) in France when family issues forced him to return to Mali. Once in his native country, he became aware of the various needs in the local market, so he established Famib Group to answer them. Over the years, the group has grown significantly with a presence in Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, France, Niger, Rwanda, Canada, and the USA.
Through Famib Group, Amadou Diawara heads several subsidiaries including Famib Consulting (specialized in consulting services), Delta Challenge (develops integrated digital solutions), and incubator FAMIB Labs. He also launched the Kingui Express marketplace and the Kingui Social network, the e-wallet payment system Xaalisi (creator of the Xaalisi and Mali Wari cryptocurrencies), and the Kingui Coin exchange platform, the Mali Virtual University, and Cluster Digital Africa whose aim is to improve the African digital ecosystem.
The Knight of the National Order of Mali considers himself one of Africa’s “digital transformers.” He is also committed to innovation research for the development of Africa because, “with everyone’s help, we can create unprecedented opportunities,” on the continent.
Melchior Koba
His professional career started in 2011 when he joined his family’s business Food & Beverage Madagascar. But nowadays, he is a seasoned entrepreneur serving clients from every part of the globe.
Habib Hassim (photo) is a Malagasy entrepreneur and the co-founder of SmartOne Group, a startup specializing in data labeling and AI advisory. The startup started, in 2012, as a call center but gradually expanded its services. It now serves a broad range of industries notably mobility, e-commerce, agriculture, health, biosecurity, media, and finance. It provides those industries with smart tools that improve decision-making and management.
On June 10, 2022, Hassim signed a partnership agreement with telecom operator Orange Madagascar to implement a joint AI training program and facilitate the professional integration of Malagasy long-term job seekers and those who are no longer in the education system, being trained, or working.
His professional career began in 2011 with Food & Beverage Madagascar, the country’s largest agri-food producer and, distributor. He is now the managing director of the agri-food producing group controlled by his family. In 2019, he became the head of private equity fund manager Inside Capital Partners to “build next-generation champions.”
Melchior Koba
After a short professional career as a marketing and web strategy consultant for SQLI Group in France, he returned to his native country, Senegal. At 24, he was one of the digital marketing pioneers in his country with the creation of People Input.
Serigne Barro (photo) is the CEO and founder of consulting firm People Input. The Dakar-based firm was established in 2002. It guides firms in their strategic marketing decisions and develops innovative solutions that give those firms competitive advantages.
According to its CEO, People Input creates websites for its clients and helps them get visibility, on social media particularly. When it started operations, the startup had to face notable challenges. “When we first entered the [Senegalese] market, firms were not aware of the importance of the services we were offering and did not care much. We had to inform and convince them,” the CEO explains. He succeeded in doing just that. Nowadays, besides Senegal, the startup is also present in Cameroon, Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, and Burkina Faso.
Thanks to People Input, he received several awards, including the 2012 WAEMU Award for best ICT Initiative. He also received the national award for the best ICT company in Senegal in 2012. Then, in 2016, he received the award for the best digital agency in Senegal and the best business solution in West Africa.
In 2014, he co-founded the communication agency Voice Africa, a joint-venture formed with advertising firm Dentsu SSA. Since 2018, he is the CEO of Dentsu SSA’s Francophone Hub. In 2020, in recognition of his achievement in the digital sector, he was appointed a member of Senegal’s National Digital Council.
Melchior Koba
His professional career taught him how important technology was for company development. Back in his native country, he wants to invest in the field to save time and streamline operations.
Henri Ousmane Gueye (photo) is a Senegalese software engineer and entrepreneur. In 2015, he co-founded (with John Diatta) Eyone, a software company based in Dakar, Senegal. His company also specializes in IT systems architecture consulting and supports businesses in their digitalization efforts.
Through Eyone, he helped digitize the operations of several Senegalese hospitals and collaborated with the Ministry of Health and Social Security on several projects.
For the software engineer, digital solutions can help streamline operations and save time. For instance, he says “when going for a health check, patients usually waste time answering the same questions and going through the same medical examinations. Also, health professionals lack quality data.” But, all of these can be addressed with digital tools.
Under Ousmane’s leadership, Eyone has expanded from its Dakar base to France, Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon and Gabon. The success achieved by the startup earned the co-founder several awards, including the second prize in the national phase of the 2017 Orange MENA Social Entrepreneur Prize.
Before pursuing an entrepreneurship career, Ousmane acquired extensive professional experience. In 2006, after a Master's in software engineering (in France), he joined Capgemini as a software engineer. Three years later, he became a contractural software developer for asset manager Lyxor and later a consultant for BNP Paribas Arbitrage.
Melchior Koba
After his university studies in France, he returned to his native country, Togo, to contribute his experience to local development. The fintech solutions he developed are used by notable companies and acclaimed by many.
Edem Adjamagbo (photo) is a Togolese entrepreneur and business intelligence engineer. He is also the founder and CEO of fintech company Semoa Group. His company develops innovative payment solutions tailored to the African socio-economic context. The aim is to “digitize cash and boost e-commerce in a continent [Ed.note: Africa] undergoing digital transformation” as well as “position Semoa Group’s solutions as alternatives to bank cards and mobile money.”
Semoa Group started as a simple online service that allowed electronic money transfers to African countries. Over the years, it diversified its activities and even allows users to pay various bills. It now has payment terminals -called Semoa Kiosque- where users can pay their bills. Users can simply load cash at the terminals, pay their bills, and even collect changes, therefore avoiding the usually long queue at the various payment counters.
The solutions developed by the fintech company are already used by notable groups and startups including Gozem, Ecobank, BMCE Capital, Moov Africa, Cofina, and RMO Job Center. The founder started his entrepreneurial career in 2012, while he was still at university. That year, he founded AEConsult, a digital consulting firm. Two years later, when he graduated from Polytech Nantes (France), he founded Semoa Group while at the same time offering his business intelligence consulting services to software development company Sopra Steria.
Back in Africa, in 2016, he became a project manager for Congo Digital academy GENC (Grande école du numérique du Congo). Since 2018, he has been combining his entrepreneurial occupations with contractual lecturing duties at the University of Lome, Togo. The tech entrepreneur has received several awards and recognitions, including the Diaspora Entrepreneur Award and the African Fintech of the Year (awarded by France Finance Innovation) in 2018.
Melchior Koba
After various legal jobs in France, where he gained experience, he returned to Côte d'Ivoire and started his own business. His idea to use technology to offer legal assistance to entrepreneurs seduced many on the continent and even sparked the interest of foreign investors.
Youssouf Ballo (photo) is an Ivorian legal expert and entrepreneur. He is also the co-founder and CEO of Legafrik, a startup offering legal assistance for company creation. The startup he co-founded -with full stack developer Daouda Diallo- in 2017, offers legal and accounting consulting services in OHADA member countries.
Through Legafrik, entrepreneurs receive a 20% discount on all the legal documents, procedures, incorporation, and registration formalities. They also have access to the start-up's network of lawyers with preferential consulting fees when they need assistance from any of those lawyers.
The legaltech was launched to address the lack of legal support and the unavailability of information assisting project owners in the implementation of their ideas and ventures. “When creating their companies, entrepreneurs usually need legal guidance but they don’t necessarily have the adequate financial resources to hire the services of accounting professionals or a notary. [...] Those who complete the formalities themselves do so through the single window platform, which is often time-consuming and complex because they usually don’t have enough information on the documents to prepare or how to fill the required forms. This is why Legafrik was created,” Youssouf explains.
The young entrepreneur has a Master's in international business, trade, and tax law from the University of Abidjan. He also has a Master's in business and property law from Toulouse 1 Capitole University and a Master's in business and tax law from INSEEC Bordeaux.
His brief professional career started in 2015 with the Bordeaux-based law firm COJC where he was a tax adviser. From September 2015 to February 2016, he was the general counsel of tech company Acrelec. Since 2018, concurrently with his work as the CEO of Legafrik, he is also the CEO of Toosign (a startup he founded the same year), a digital trust services provider.
He is a volunteer for the association "Les amis du numérique pour l'Afrique et le développement" whose stated aim is to help boost digital transformation in Africa and France. In 2018, he was one of the awardees of the Francophonie 35 under 35 Youth Awards.
One year after the launch of his inspiring startup, Youssouf Ballo welcomed French platform legalstart.fr into Legafrik’s shareholding. With the support thus provided, he intended to initiate his African expansion. The notable expansion candidates were Benin, Senegal, and Cameroon.
Melchior Koba
With a passion for technology and its disruptive power, he surrounded himself with tech talents to implement innovative and impactful projects.
Cameroonian entrepreneur Vincent Onana Binyegui (photo) is the designer and developer of the solar-powered educational tablet Teachmepad. He distributes the tablets through his startup Teachmepad Mobile Limited, founded in 2016.
With Teachmepad, he guarantees quality education to every child, notably in rural areas where access to the internet and electricity remains a real challenge. Thanks to Teachmepad tablets, children can access educational content, like Wikipedia, offline.
The tablets were launched to address some of the problems Vincent identified in 2014, during his field research works in the Central African Region when he was still studying at the International Relations Institute of Cameroon (IRIC). The notable problem he identified was a shortage of teachers in remote areas, where thousands of children are thus deprived of basic education. He then vowed to address the problems using technology. “Teachmepad is a tablet we built to address several challenges facing education in remote areas; notably poor access to the internet, educational contents and electricity, and a shortage of schools,” he explains.
Vincent has a technician certificate in Banking and Finance, a Bachelor of Management Studies, and a Master's in international relations. He started his professional career in 2008 with two consecutive internships at Company Press and Publishing Cameroon (SOPECAM) and LeSage Cameroon (from 2010 to 2011).
He then dived into the entrepreneurship world in 2012 by co-founding Chartered Finance & Co., a business development and investment firm. In 2014, he launched VOB Research, a startup whose mission is to find tangible solutions to problems encountered by Africans in their daily lives- through technology.
His positive impact on the strategic education sector -thanks to Teachmepad Mobile Limited- earned him multiple awards and recognitions. In 2016 he won the Grand Prize of Project Contest organized by DRIMP Youth Forum Foundation and the Bantu Prize of Innovation awarded by the Bantu Development Initiative. The following year, he was featured in Bonjour Idée's list of the Top 5 African Startups of the Year. He also won the Hackathon Award for the best start-up organized during the international forum on digital economy in Cameroon before winning the 2018 Prix Jeunesse de la Francophonie 35.35.
Melchior Koba
The digital platform boasts of thousands of monthly users, therefore improving the visibility of registered artisans and informal workers.
In 2018, a new startup appeared in the Ivorian startup ecosystem networking users with artisans and informal workers. Dubbed “Mon Artisan” (Which literally means ‘My craftsman’ in French), it was founded by Kevin Sesse (photo), a business law graduate.
The startup specializes in household emergencies and renovation works, including interior design, plumbing, and gardening.
"My team and I give visibility to artisans and informal workers. We also help them access better work opportunities,” Kevin explains. The latter is a member of the Ivorian tech consortium Côte d'Ivoire Innovation 20 (Ci20) and a winner of the 2010 Gifted and Talented Pupils and Students IQ Award for his academic career. He began his professional career in July 2015 as a research assistant at Ipsos Abidjan. From February to August 2016, he was a trainer in the framework of Orange Côte d'Ivoire's Digital Homes program. Currently, he is a managing partner at consulting firm Social Tech Group.
His entrepreneurial career earned him several awards. In 2017, he was awarded the Alassane Ouattara Emerging Young Entrepreneur Award and the MTN Y'ello Start-up Award. The following year, he received the Deloitte Innovative Start-up Award, the Prix Jeunesse de la Francophonie in the technology category, and the African Entrepreneurship Award for Innovation. In 2019, he also won the RFI Challenge App Africa award.
Melchior Koba
She chose to leverage technology to avoid preventable deaths caused by a lack of information. To fulfill her mission she created a universal health identification system dubbed Kea.
Vena Arielle Ahouansou (photo) is a Beninese doctor and entrepreneur. In 2017, she launched Kea Medicals, a startup providing universal health IDs to users. Via her platform Kea, she interconnects various health institutions allowing efficient healthcare to users no matter the health institution they visit. Indeed, attending physicians can check patients’ health records by imputing the latter’s universal IDs (previously provided by Kea) on the startup’s centralized platform. That way, it contributes to better diagnosis and treatment.
Arielle graduated from the University of Parakou's Faculty of Medicine (Benin) in 2017. During her medical internship, she witnessed many preventable deaths. The death of a woman named Charlotte was one too many.
"One evening, in Benin, I was on call at a referral hospital when Charlotte, a woman aged about 27, was referred. She delivered twins in a suburban hospital but, sadly she developed postpartum hemorrhage” and needed an urgent blood transfusion, she explains. The young mother died ten minutes after reaching the referral hospital because doctors had to check her blood type before the transfusion.
To ensure such preventable losses are averted, Arielle Ahouansou is focused on universal health identification. She is also active in several social projects. From 2014 to 2015, she served as the regional coordinator for the Health Sanitation and Hygiene Office, an organization that facilitates people's access to water and sanitation. One year earlier, she founded the non-governmental organization REFELD/MEN for women's empowerment and leadership development.
She is a Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme and GSMA Ecosystem Accelerator program fellow. In 2018, she was on Forbes Africa’s list of the 30 under 30 most promising African youths. The following year, she won the Paris Grand Prizes for Innovation.
Melchior Koba
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After an extensive professional career, he decided to go back to his native country and offer effective data management solutions.
Philippe Nkouaya (photo) is a Cameroonian entrepreneur and founder of Philjohn Technologies, an IT services and consulting startup. Through the startup he founded in 2017, he offers firms sustainable solutions for quick file processing and sorting.
The startup was created following its founder’s insurance coverage issues. “It took [the insurer] close to a year to process my claim just because I was unable to find my files,” Philippe explains. After that incident, he decided to find solutions so that firms can find any file in “under three seconds.”
He is nowadays a reference in Cameroon. He graduated from The Limoges Computer Sciences Engineering School with a Master’s in Computer Science in 2016. But, his professional career began four years earlier in the entertainment industry. That year, he became the manager of Hope Music Group in Cameroon. In 2014, in conjunction with his duties at Hope Music Group, he was also an assistant IT manager for the communication firm Global Link.
In 2016, he worked as a business intelligence analyst at Business & Decision Group and then as an external IT consultant at Sanofi Pasteur, France. In 2017, he became the Chairman of Hope Music Group, in conjunction with his duties as chairman of Hope Clothing. When he launched Philjohn Technologies, he was a member of the board of Hope Management & Consulting (HOMCO).
Philippe Nkouaya is an E-Ambassador for Campus France. He also won several awards for his works in the digital entrepreneurship sector. He is for instance one of the beneficiaries of the 2018 TEF entrepreneurship program. In 2018, he received the Francophonie 35 under 35 Youth Awards and was named best digital entrepreneur at the Bonteh Digital Media Awards. That same year, he was also on Avance Media's list of the Top 50 most influential young Cameroonians.
Melchior Koba
By training, she was not destined for the heathtech industry. However, a painful incident convinced her that she had to act to save millions of people in Africa.
Beninese-born Bola Bardet (photo) is the founder and CEO of insuretech Susu. Based in Côte d’Ivoire and France, Susu allows the African diaspora to buy health insurance plans for their relatives living on the continent. The plans offered by her startup cover the treatment of chronic illnesses, preventive and emergency care, medical evacuations, and certified drug purchases.
She launched Susu to save others from her painful experience. In 2017, when she was preparing for her MBA in Paris, her father died of poorly managed heart problems. “My father died in 2017 after he had a heart issue in Benin and could not be saved. The health issue was a complication from his hypertension that was poorly managed. At that moment, I was finishing my MBA at HEC Paris and the goal I set for myself was to try to prevent that from happening to other people, maybe that will be something good that I can do in my life,” she explains.
She aims to initiate her startup’s African expansion and enhance offers in Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, and Cameroon. For that purpose, in March 2022, she secured US$1 million in pre-seed funding and US$1.2 million in debt and grant financing from BPI France.
Mrs. Bola is an executive MBA graduate. She also has a Master’s in Management and several professional and social entrepreneurship certificates. Over her fifteen years of professional experience, she sharpened her skills with LCN Communications, luxury goods holding company Richemont, and investment bank JP Morgan Chase & Co.
In 2019, thanks to Susu, she was the winner of the Sanofi challenge organized during the Viva Tech conference. This year, she is also a finalist of the Female Founder Challenge organized by Viva Tech in collaboration with 50inTech.
Melchior Koba
Currently, her smartphones are ambitious competitors to low-cost brands.
Fadima Diawara (photo) is the founder and CEO of Kunfabo, the startup that contributes to digital inclusion in Guinea. In Malinke, kunfabo means “keep in touch”. So, the startup founded in 2017 wants to contribute to digital inclusion in Guinea and Africa as a whole.
Kunfabo smartphones were introduced in the local market in 2020 with preinstalled apps like Find me (which helps geolocalize nearest health centers and pharmacies), Afro Cook (a recipe search engine for African foods), and Dikalo, the messenger app developed by a Cameroonian startup. The smartphones run Android 8.1, are 4G-compliant, and are certified by international bodies, including several in the European Union.
Fadima initiated the Kunfabo project after she noticed the strong demand for quality and affordable smartphones in Africa. "Kunfabo came to meet this need by creating an African brand that represents us and that Africans can identify themselves with," explains the tech entrepreneur. She launched the smartphone thanks to a €300,000 loan she obtained from Societe Generale Guinea in November 2019. Barely a year later, in August 2020, she repaid that loan, testifying to the financial health of Kunfabo and the viability of her project. To date, her startup has sold over 4,000 smartphones.
Fadima Diawara started her professional career, in 2013, as a sales agent at Organo Gold, Spain. In 2015, she joined the administrative management department of Vueling, a low-cost airline. A few months later, she joined Prefabricats Planas before her recruitment at Bershka. In 2017, she was recruited at Lozano Imports Inc, where she stayed for three months before embarking on the Kunfabo adventure.
Her investment in the smartphone manufacturing industry earned her several awards over the years. Those awards include the Original Startup of the Year award in Spain in 2020. The same year, she won the award for best female entrepreneur of the year in Girona, Spain. She was also one of the winners of the 2020 Africa-France Summit Challenge.
Melchior Koba
After four years of witnessing the pains of women in a rural area where he was the head doctor, he created a healthtech to facilitate breast and cervical cancer screening.
Conrad Tankou (photo) is a Cameroonian entrepreneur and founder of heathtech startup Global Innovation and Creativity Space (GIC Space). Through GIC Space (founded in 2018), he developed GICMED, a project aimed at facilitating remote cervical and breast cancer screening.
“GICMED offers cutting edge and cost-effective MedTech and Telemedicine Innovations, enabling poor, remote, and rural communities with the greatest need to enjoy affordable and accessible healthcare,” the startup explains on its website. Indeed, with its services and products, notably breast and cervical cancer screening, smart speculum, fine needle biopsy syringe adapter, and digital pathology center, it allows patients to remotely and quickly get screened wherever they are. It also allows doctors to seek their colleagues’ contributions.
With GICMED, Conrad wants to help women living in remote areas quickly access cervical and breast cancer screening. His wish is to see the solution deployed in every village in Cameroon and Sub-Saharan Africa.
For his works, the P.h.D (in biomedical science in 2013) holder has earned several national and international awards and recognitions. For instance, through GICMED, he won Cameroon's 2019 Startup of the Year award. Then, a year later, he won the Next Einstein Forum Challenge in Kigali. In 2021, GICMED was the winner of the Africa Young Innovators for Health Award presented by the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Speak Up Africa.
Before GIC Space, Conrad Tankou had co-founded (with his compatriot Alain Nteff) GiftedMom, in 2013, to improve maternal and child health. From 2014 to 2018, he was the head doctor of Bambalang Medical center, in North-West Cameroon.
Melchior Koba