Starting a business in Africa while living in Europe can quickly turn into an obstacle course. To avoid failure, more and more members of the diaspora are relying on support structures like incubators. This support has become crucial.

Zéphirin Jiogo's enthusiasm is infectious. "So, I'm 42 years old, based in the Paris region, employed by a multinational company in charge of financial transformation, and an investor in Douala and Yaoundé, Cameroon." He's lost count of the number of trips back and forth between France and his home country to realize his entrepreneurial ambitions. "It's really the desire to make an impact."

It was this desire that drove him to create an app connecting delivery drivers with e-commerce players. He even went so far as to provide delivery drivers with motorcycles. But getting started wasn't easy, as he explains.

"Many entrepreneurs will talk to you about resources, the lack of resources. In my case, I would say, first of all, there is a lack of support framework. There aren't always the government relays we expect. There isn't always the expertise. Today, it's a country that is losing talent, people going to Canada, people going elsewhere. I had two very competent managers who had to leave the country overnight for personal reasons. These are the first problems we have before financing. Financing remains a real concern, but before that, there are other problems that are even more important."

Support, a lever for success

Faced with these difficulties, he decided to turn to an incubator once his project was better structured. A decision that changed everything, he says. "I'll be very clear, without an incubator, all of this would have been impossible. We were able to raise quite substantial funds that allowed us to finance the activity and go even further. We signed strategic partnerships with Spirou, which is the Indian giant of electric motorcycles in Africa. The project today has reached a level of maturity that we would never have reached without support."

The African diaspora is today an increasingly strategic target for incubators and donors. This is a recent development, according to Olivier Bossa, president of SIAD, an international solidarity association that supports project leaders through its Résonance Nord/Sud incubator. “I won’t say ‘mistreated,’ but it was always considered a statistic. Most often, we said yes. The diaspora’s remittances practically exceeded development aid. But in fact, I think this was a misunderstanding of this target. And I think many states are beginning to realize the potential of this diaspora, which isn’t just real estate investors or those who simply make money transfers, but rather entrepreneurs. They are also, above all, patriots. Even if they have lived much more time abroad, they still want to contribute to the development of their country. And it is this awareness that we need to have in order to better support them.”

This dynamic is also reflected in financing: the African Development Bank is now dedicating $5 million to a program to support local SMEs in Mali, Togo and Madagascar.