On Our Own?: Growing Francophone Startup Champions

The Trajectory Africa

Welcome to Episode 2 of Dans les Coulisses, a series exploring VC and tech entrepreneurship in Francophone Africa, brought to you by Impact Hub Dakar and The Trajectory Africa.

Impact Hub Dakar is a Dakar-based incubator that supports early stage startups in Senegal, with a mission to help investors meet scalable, early stage startups in Francophone Africa. The Trajectory Africa is a “pop-up” podcast exploring the trajectory, or pathway, of venture capital and startup formation in Africa.

This episode’s guest is Omar Cissé. Omar is the Founder and CEO of InTouch, a platform that is working to increase financial inclusion in Africa. The platform has 50,000+ TouchPoints across 14 countries, with more than 400 services available, generating more than 2 billion euros in transaction volume per year. In 2010, he launched CTIC Dakar, the first ICT incubator in Senegal, which he managed until 2013. Prior to CTIC, he co-founded 2SI, a company specializing in software engineering, which he led from 2005 to 2010.

Omar is also the co-founder of Teranga Capital, an investment fund he launched in collaboration with Investisseurs & Partenaires, an impact investment group dedicated to SMEs based in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian Ocean. He is an engineer by training, with a degree from the École Supérieure Polytechnique of Dakar and an MBA from the Institut Supérieur de Management.

In this episode, we discuss:

• InTouch’s scale and expansion journey [2:12]
• VC opportunities in Francophone Africa and the importance of talent [8:52]
• Structure, challenges, and means to improve the Senegelese startup ecosystem [10:55]
• Investing category leaders, or industry “champions” [16:50]
• Signs of progress in the Senegalese startup ecosystem [23:31]
• Size, characteristics and constraints of Francophone markets [29:10]
• Sub-market differences in terms of regulation and talent [38:25]
• Problematic stereotypes about Francophone Africa [47:00]

NOTES:

• At 18:35, I meant to say “imported to domestically produced” instead of “domestically produced to imported”.
• At 24:40, CFA = FCFA.

This episode was recorded in July of this year, which makes the comment at 46:08 about Sequoia Capital calling for sustainable growth, a bit ironic in the aftermath of FTX’s collapse. There’s also the question of whether African startups/to what extent African startups held to the profitability mentioned.