Innovation: Africa is inventing its own model

Close to 70% of employees in Africa would be willing to leave their company if it lacked openness to innovation or entrepreneurship.

Innovation has become a strategic priority for an increasing number of companies in Africa, which rarely enjoy the necessary resources and agility to transform themselves rapidly.

Innovative African entrepreneurs are contributing to creating a new model, inspired by external success stories without necessarily copying them but rather adapting them to local realities. Certain companies bank on the innovative potential of their employees. Others open up to external actors, such as start-ups. From Dakar to Nairobi, from Cape Town to Casablanca, intrapreneurship and open innovation experiments are multiplying, creating pan-African momentum.

“As the continent of technological disruption, Africa is currently entering a new stage in terms of innovation. Following the success stories of fintechs, the continent is experiencing a new impetus with the practices of intrapreneurship and open innovation that bring pragmatic local solutions in environments that do not always benefit from internal resources and a regulatory framework conducive to the creation of innovative offers. It is now up to companies to embrace these new initiatives in order to meet the continuously evolving in situ needs of the market and to create a culture of agility that will help them reinvent their business model.” explains Abdou Diop, Managing Partner of Mazars in Morocco.