Orange announces the launch of its start-up accelerator programme in the Ivory Coast and Israel

Mari-Noëlle Jégo-Laveissière,
Senior Executive Vice President of Innovation,
Marketing and Technologies of Orange

With “Orange Fab Ivory Coast” and “Fab Israel”, Orange’s network of start-up accelerators is now present on four continents. The programme, which is a pillar of the Group's open innovation approach, reflects 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 selected start-ups 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.

Besides its commitment with start-ups, Orange has also attracted the interest of African partners and of the ecosystem of developers in Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Mali and Senegal by organising 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.