After a blank year in 2020 due to a pandemic, the Franco-African Foundation will resume this month and until March 21 its call for applications to select a new promotion of 100 young African and French entrepreneurs. The Young Leaders, an initiative launched in 2017 by Beninese Lionel Zinsou with the support of the French public authorities, has become a private foundation, but the goal remains the same: to create a network of mutual help and reflection between young entrepreneurs and from France and Africa.
It is a very macroeconomic idea that is gaining ground among young entrepreneurs in France and Africa. Leaders need to help each other move forward together. This is the goal of the Young Leaders network. An idea launched in 2017 by former Prime Minister of Benin Lionel Zinsou and taken over in 2018 by five organizers.
They restarted it through the French African fund, especially set up by the Beninese economist and banker Khaled Igué. “The idea of the French-African fund is to act as a catalyst. A career and path accelerator for Young Leaders, ”he says.
Young leaders are first and foremost a support network. If this network is open to artists, athletes and intellectuals, entrepreneurs and businessmen are dominant. “We save young leaders ten or even twenty years. As they enter the course, they follow leadership training, they meet investors, institutional partners, civil society leaders, but also policy makers. They create a very important address book and the opportunity to work with financial and institutional partners, which they have the right to call for their projects, ”assures Khaled Igué.
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Joint reflection
Alexandre Coster is French. He has worked in Africa for fifteen years in the fields of education, microfinance and energy. He defines himself as a social entrepreneur. Co-founder with Khaled Igué from the Franco-African Foundation, what interests him in the network is the common reflection aspect.
“We do not want to define ourselves as a think tank because we want to go beyond that, but of course the idea is to be able to create think tanks, even externally. So there is this idea of rethinking things on many different topics, whether it is economic, political and other, and with this vision for French and African youth on global or specific topics in Africa, ”explains Alexandre Coster.
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If the goal is to create links between France and Africa, the young leaders will not be the arguments for French economic diplomacy. “What needs to be built is a long-term partnership,” adds Khaled Igué. “If France is nostalgic for something it had before and that it wants to find again, it’s a waste of time. We are no longer there. The young African generation that wants to create jobs on a massive scale is in a vision of a long-term partnership. And that is what she is asking for in France today. “
In other words, and this is the goal, the network will look much more like its members than the idea that its sponsors, like President Emmanuel Macron, may have.
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