
by Aurelie de Gournay
- Event
150 entrepreneurs from the Diaspora and 300 participants joined the 2022 edition of the Accelerated Africa Conference + (AAC+ 2022), organized by the African Diaspora Youth Forum in Europe (ADYFE) in collaboration with the Opportunities Youth in Africa (OYA) programme, and Meta, formerly Facebook, and which is building a metaverse to support knowledge, experience and technology sharing.
AAC+ 2022, under the theme “Leveraging Technologies for Africa: The catalytic role of the Diaspora”, focused on the ever-increasing role of digitalization and the adoption of tech-based solution within businesses to increase their relevance and competitiveness as well as support entrepreneurs or wantepreneurs wishing to bring their contribution to the table.
Before the conference, Youssouf Diakite, ADYFE Vice-President, and Yann Huguenard, YH Consulting Funder, presented an online Masterclass on “building innovation, a springboard for business strategy”.
During the conference, speakers from the international community and the private sector discussed how to engage in successful partnerships to foster opportunities in Africa, how to engage the diaspora to increase the sharing of knowledge, experience and technology, as well as to reduce youth access barriers to market or financing.
Meta held a session specifically on augmented reality / virtual reality (AR/VR), sharing Meta’s best practices and giving concrete examples on using extended reality / virtual reality (XR/VR) to foster European diaspora engagement in Africa, Middle-East and Turkey.
The conference was followed by a high-level dinner organized by Innovation Outre Mer (IOM – Overseas innovation) which gathered representatives from the private sector, the international community, French Government, as well as multinationals (such as Meta or BPI France), in particular:
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H.E. Jean-François Carenco, Minister Delegate for Overseas territories, France
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Miss Karima Silvent, Global Head of Human Resources at AXA Assurance, France
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Miss Alexandra Palt, Director General for Corporate Social Responsibility at L’Oréal, France
This day aimed at fostering partnerships between African and diaspora entrepreneurs, the international private sector and the public sector so as to facilitate knowledge, experience and technology transfer and strengthen the local private sector.