Orange reinforces its strategy of corporate venture by providing its flagship programme of investment in the start-up, Orange Digital Ventures, a new section dedicated to Africa. In the framework of this initiative, the Group committed € 50 million, which correspond to half of the direct investments made through its new programme, Orange Digital Ventures Africa ; the other half being dedicated to indirect investments through funds specialised on Africa.
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With Orange Digital Ventures Africa, the Group adopts an investment vehicle dedicated to innovative projects early stage in africa in the areas of new connectivities, fintech, internet of things, energy and e-health. The objective is to target start-up offering answers to the fundamental issues in Africa while making leverage on the strengths of the operator on the continent. This support will involve all the innovative start-ups, whether they are geographically based in Africa or that they address the african issues from another continent.
The device will be equipped with a dedicated team, based in Dakar as from next September in order to meet the expectations of the responsiveness and simplicity of start-up. This new initiative underlines the commitment of Orange in Africa, a territory of growth where currently nearly one person in ten is an Orange customer, but also its desire to be an actor always at the cutting edge of ecosystem digital.
It comes to reinforce the existing initiatives of Orange on open innovation in Africa, such as Orange Fab in Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Senegal, BIG in Jordan to facilitate partnerships with start-ups ; the network of incubators as partners in the CTIC in Dakar, the provision of APIs Orange on the mainland or the Orange Prize for Social Entrepreneur to reward the social entrepreneurs in Africa.
Pierre Louette, deputy ceo of Orange, and president of Orange Digital Investment, comments: “The new services and new business model in Africa were as soon as the launch of Orange Digital Ventures is one of the thematic priority investment of our corporate ventures. With this announcement, we are committed a little more to the sides of the digital ecosystem in africa, which bears as elsewhere, and perhaps more than elsewhere a development issue “.
The start-up will be able to get in touch with the teams at Orange Digital Ventures Africa via the website digitalventures.orange.com
About Orange Digital Ventures
Orange Digital Ventures mission is to detect and accompany start-ups in the development phase, the initial or ” early stage “, via minority shareholdings in the capital. Its aim is to finance start-ups working in the fields that will transform the digital ecosystem and focus on markets/sectors, large scale, through innovation, technology disruptive or new business models.
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