Education & Training

The ISI group (Institut Supérieur d'Informatique) is a private educational group, founded in 1994. The group represents 2,500 students, spread over 9 campuses of which 7 campuses are located in Senegal and 2 in Mauritania. The ambition of the group is to participate in the training offer diversification in Senegal and the sub-region. The opening of campuses in the regions is a strong aspect of its strategy, willing to participate in the revitalization of the Senegalese regions. ISI Group offers training in 2, 3 and 5 years in the fields of computer engineering, networks and systems, and management. 

In 2019, the group entered into a partnership with Huawei, one of the world's leading providers of infrastructure and smart devices in the field of information and communications technology (ICT). This partnership trains students in ICT and provides essential digital skills. 

THE ENTREPRENEUR

An engineer by training and a graduate of Laval University in Canada, Mr. Abdou Sambe also holds a degree in business administration from Cheick Anta DIOP University in Dakar, Senegal. He has been leading ISI since its creation in 1994. The promoter has a very social vision for access to quality training for all, hence the decentralization of its campuses throughout the country for better social inclusion. 

PARTNERSHIP WITH I&P 

Through its I&P Education and Employment program, I&P is committed to working with the ISI Group to: 

⇒  Supporting the development of online training. 

⇒  Strengthen the school's resilience to the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

⇒  Promote greater social inclusion within the school by revitalizing the employability of young graduates from regional campuses through the establishment of professional insertion space  

⇒  Develop training offers suited to local labor markets’ dynamics  

EXPECTED IMPACTS 

⇒  Increased quality of training and stronger employability of youth 

⇒  Enhanced digitization and accessibility in the rural regions 

⇒  Improved sustainability of the regional campuses with more adapted offerings and lasting social impact locally 

A COMPANY SUPPORTED BY THE PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN I&P AND MASTERCARD FOUNDATION 

Since February 2021, I&P has partnered with Mastercard Foundation in its I&P Education to Employment initiative, a joint financing program aimed at improving access to relevant and quality education on the African continent. 

The partnership between I&P Education to Employment and Mastercard Foundation specifically aims to support 30 education entrepreneurs in 3 target countries (Ivory Coast, Ghana, Senegal) over 3 years. The partner companies will receive funding and technical assistance to support them in their digital transformation, resilience, and growth strategy as well as in the implementation of social inclusion and employability measurement mechanisms. 

Read more about the project 

www.groupeisi.com

I&P Education to Employment

PlayLabs is a network of childcare centers and innovative nursery schools in Senegal.

These preschool institutions welcome children from 10 months to 5 years old, from Monday to Friday and from September to June. They provide children with adapted early learning activities answering their needs in terms of cognitive, socio-affective, and psychomotor development. The programs deployed in these institutions are aligned with the Senegalese education program (for kindergarten) but based on Regina Emilia's educational approach, which is innovative. It promotes learning activities through games, education projects sessions' organization, children's commitment to knowledge acquisition, and parents' active participation. 

THE ENTREPRENEURS

The project is led by two entrepreneurs, Karima Grant and Chakera McIntosh.

Karima Grant is passionate about education and has accumulated a solid experience in this field thanks to numerous professional and association experiences. She notably has been the coordinator of an international baccalaureate program and has supported as a consultant the launch and development of three Higher Education Institutions in Senegal. Her experience and its association experience have contributed to making her a reference in the education field in Senegal and internationally. She is a member of the Ashoka network, which is an international network of social entrepreneurs who act in favor of social innovation.

Chakera McIntosh is supporting Karima Grant in this project. She has a Bachelor's Degree in International Communication from the American University of Paris (AUP) and a Master's Degree in Mitigation and Diaspora Studies from London University. She has worked for several years in the marketing and communication field.

PARTNERSHIP WITH I&P AND TERANGA CAPITAL

Kies is supported by Teranga Capital through the I&P Acceleration in Sahel program. This support will help the company in:

• Stabilizing the existing infrastructure with the reinforcement of the current infrastructures (in Mermoz and Somone)
• The implementation of an efficient marketing and business development strategy, the improvement of the company's organization with the formalization of its curriculum, procedures, training modules for facilitators, etc.
• The strengthening of the accounting and financial functions and the reinforcement of the company's service offer
• The deployment of two new daycare centers in 2022

ABOUT DE TERANGA CAPITAL

Teranga Capital is the first impact investment fund dedicated to financing and supporting Senegalese SMEs and start-ups.

Led by Olivier Furdelle, Teranga Capital is the third African fund sponsored by Investisseurs & Partenaires as part of the program I&P Development 2. The network currently includes a fund in Niger (Sinergi Niger), Burkina Faso (Sinergi Burkina), Côte d'Ivoire (Comoé Capital) and Madagascar (Miarakap).

Access Teranga Capital's website →

Lomé Business School ( LSB) is a university offering training courses in Information Technology Management  and Business Management in Lomé, Togo. LBS opened  in 2013 with 13 students and has 117 students today. 30% of the students are coming from 8 countries in the West African sub-region, Cameroon and Gabon.

THE ENTREPRENEURS

Born in Côte d'Ivoire, Fulgence Amani (CEO of LBS) studied in Côte d'Ivoire and in France. As a telecommunication engineer from ITES (Institut des Technologies et Spécialités), he worked as an IT engineer in Abidjan before continuing his studies in France where he got a master's degree in finance at SKEMA. After several years in IT Management in France at Total and Capgemini, he worked as an IT and Fintech consultant and worked with clients such as Orange Bank, Ernst & Young and Société Générale in Africa. For the past ten years, Fulgence Amani has also held teaching positions at USTA-Ouagadougou and ESSCA Paris in addition to his consulting activities before co-founding LBS with his wife, Patience Adjivon.

Marketing Director of LBS, Patience Adjivon holds a master's degree in R&D and Biotechnology from Paris VI. With a rich professional background on missions as a laboratory researcher in healthcare in France (Institut Jacques Monod, Institut Cochin, Sanofi, Pierre Fabre) and at Cap Gemini as a Fintech project coordinator, she co-founded LBS.

PARTNERSHIP WITH I&P

LBS is supported by I&P through education and employment component of I&P Acceleration in Sahel program (IP2E).

The funding and support provided to LBS aims to :

• Set up an e-learning platform to digitalize a large part of the training program
• Strengthen the pedagogical equipment of the school
• Set up a pedagogical engineering process including aspects related to digitalization

EXPECTED IMPACTS

• Strengthen access to quality higher education in Togo

The Lycée Privé Technique Moderne de Koudougou (LTMK) is a technical secondary school created in 2017, located in Koudougou, Burkina Faso, about a hundred kilometers from Ouagadougou.

The school has 207 students and offers initial training (BEP and BAC) in the fields of electronics, civil engineering and electrical engineering. The school will open in 2021-2022, a cycle of classical secondary education from the 6th to the 10th grade.

THE ENTREPRENEUR

Mr. KABORE is a 37 year old Burkinabé, holder of a DUT in commercial management and a Master in Marketing and Business Intelligence from the African Institute of Management (IAM Ouaga). After fifteen years of experience in teaching and recruitment, he opened the Institut Supérieur de l'Eau, du Bâtiment et de l'Energie à Ouagadougou (ISEBE) in 2013, a training center based in Ouagadougou that offers training in civil engineering, geology and energy engineering. In 2017, three years after the opening of ISEBE, Mr. KABORE decided to open LTMK with the main objective of providing students with tools for entrepreneurship or giving them a solid foundation before entering a higher education institution. 

PARTNERSHIP WITH I&P

LTMK is supported by I&P through I&P Acceleration in Sahel program dedicated to education and employment (IP2E).

EXPECTED IMPACTS

The funding and support provided to LTMK aims at :

• The location, installation and the supply of 10 classrooms for the opening of a classical teaching cycle 
• The purchase of materials for equipments of a laboratory of practical work (TP)
• The funding of the working capital requirement

L’Ateliers Des Génies is a startup founded in 2015, which develops programs and activities for children aged 4 to 16 and youth aged 17 to 25. The company offers several programs related to digital literacy, robotic programming, algorithm, coding and web design to equip learners with problem-solving skills, stimulate critical thinking and develop analytical skills.

THE ENTREPRENEUR

L’Atelier des Génies was founded by Fatima SARR, who started her entrepreneurial career at a very young age, completing a degree in web design. She was project coordinator at oxford business group. She then launched, before the creation of Atelier des Génies, two startups that worked for large international companies such as Google and large projects of Government Agencies, and accompanies business leaders in the development of their Business Development strategies.

PARTNERSHIP WITH TERANGA CAPITAL

The Atelier des Génies benefited from the PACE program implemented in Senegal by Teranga Capital. 

The expected impacts at the end of the partnership are :

• The popularization of digital culture
• The reinforcement of the training of children by digital notions
• The formalization of employees and the creation of jobs

About Teranga Capital

Teranga Capital is the first impact investment fund dedicated to the financing and support of Senegalese SMEs and start-ups. Headed by Olivier Furdelle, Teranga Capital is the third African fund sponsored by Investisseurs & Partenaires under the I&P Développement 2 program. The network currently includes a fund in Niger (Sinergi Niger), Burkina Faso (Sinergi Burkina), Ivory Coast (Comoé Capital) and Madagascar (Miarakap). → Find out more about Teranga Capital

Ed Partners Africa is a non-banking financial institution that aims to provide adapted financial solutions to the education sector and especially to affordable schools in East Africa.

Context

In Kenya, the rapid urbanization combined with the rising income levels have increased the demand for private schools as the quality of public schools is wanting. In 2018, there were 52,000 registered and unregistered private schools in the country that focused on primary and secondary enrolments. Ed Partners currently lends to both affordable and middle-income schools, affordable schools being those with annual school fees below USD 300. By mid-2021, the company had disbursed a total of USD 1.5 mililon to over 140 schools.

The government has until now turned a blind eye to the existence of these schools, but has recently mandated that all schools with non-compliant infrastructure will be shut down. This is therefore incentivizing already registered schools to upgrade their infrastructure and for unregistered schools to start the registration process and to begin investing in compliant infrastructures. Therefore, most schools will require additional investment in equipment and basic infrastructure.

In this context, Ed Partners aims to fill the gap in the current market by providing customized products, understanding schools’ special needs and proposing tailored complimentary services to affordable schools in Kenya and in the long term in the region.

The model was conceived by replicating the proven business model of Varthana, a school financing company in India, with 7 years of experience and a current portfolio size of USD 157 million provided to over 3,500 schools.

The entrepreneurs

Ed Partners was founded by a team of 4 microfinance experts with on average 15+ years of experience in impact investing and in microfinance in East Africa and in India. Together, these founding members bring their expertise and network to support the roll-out of the project in the region.

Ed Partners is currently managed by Amos Mwangi who is the CEO. Amos has 17 years of experience in business development, sales, credit management and leadership. He previously worked 6 years as a Business Development Manager at Faulu Microfinance Bank in Kenya where he oversaw 44 branches in 38 locations. Before Faulu Microfinance, he worked at Equity Bank and Family Bank in various roles at both branch and head office level. Amos holds a Masters in Banking and Finance from Moi University and achieved complementary business and finance studies at Kenyatta University.

Partnership with I&P

The partnership between Ed Partners and I&P (through its fund I&P Afrique Entrepreneurs 2) aims to:

⇒ Ensuring a wider geographical coverage with the opening of 6 additional hubs in 6 counties in Kenya

⇒ Funding EdPartners’ loan book. The company anticipates a rapid growth of the loan book to reach 6,000 loans disbursed to about 3,000 schools in the next 5 years

⇒ Supporting further expansion into the rest of East Africa within the next few years, where there is significant demand for the products offered by Ed Partners

Expected Impacts

Ed Partners has the potential to have an important impact on the education sector in Kenya and in the long term in East Africa.

The company enables improvement in the quality of education offered by middle-income and affordable schools by providing access to adapted financial solutions and coaching.

Created in 2018 by a talented young Malagasy entrepreneur, Sayna is a startup specialized in digital training and outsourcing of IT projects, carried out by African developers via a micro-tasking platform.

Sayna intends to address a twofold problem: the lack of training in the digital sector in Africa, and the gap between the supply of digital talent and the growing demand of companies in the context of their digital transformation.

Sayna offers digital skills training and provides solutions that allow the students to enter the job market. To date, Sayna has trained nearly 200 students.

Today, Sayna aims to develop a tech startup model based on two pillars:

⇒ A paying online training platform for learners that allows them to follow, evaluate and validate their learning, but also to have access to company IT projects corresponding to the learning they have validated during their training.

⇒ A "microtasking" platform that allows companies to outsource their IT projects more efficiently, which are divided into distributed micro-tasks and assigned to freelance developers registered on the platform.

THE ENTREPRENEUR

The promoter of the project, Matina Razafimahefa, is a young Malagasy entrepreneur of 23 years old, winner of several awards. At 20 years old, she decided to stop her studies to devote herself fully to the deployment of the project and has surrounded herself with advisors and experienced business angels.

PARTNERSHIP WITH I&P ACCELERATION TECHNOLOGIES AND MIARAKAP

Sayna is financed and supported by I&P Acceleration Technologies, a €2.5 million program aimed at financing and supporting fifteen digital start-ups in Sub-Saharan Africa, supported by the French Development Agency (AFD) through the Digital Africa initiative.

As such, Sayna benefits from a €100,000 repayable advance from the I&P Acceleration Technologies program to :

⇒— Finalize and launch the micro tasking platform

—⇒ Roll out the training programs in partnership with a leading player in Bootcamp training, Holberton (Silicon Valley)

⇒ Train 200 students by the end of 2021

NEXT STEPS AND EXPECTED IMPACTS

Sayna's ambition is to :

—• Enable 8,000 people in Africa to enter the digital industry through its training and have more than 3,500 people working on its micro task platform.

•— Meet the IT needs of 300 SMEs and start-ups in the French-speaking world.

—• Complete a Series A fundraising of approximately €3 million in 2022 to accelerate growth and finance a pan-African expansion in West Africa.

Pigier Cameroun is a private business school for higher education, launched in 2011 by the Cameroonian Dr Henri Tafou. With the mission to “Train for employment”, Pigier Cameroun stand out as a leading player in vocational training in Cameroon. The school provides pragmatic solutions to match the needs of companies in terms of competent human resources.

Pigier Cameroun offers trainings of international quality in Human Sciences and Management, at Bachelor and Master levels. The training programs include: Banking and Corporate Finance, Finance, Audit and Management Control, Communication, Marketing & Digital, Transport, Logistics and Customs, Business Management, Taxation and Business Law, Human Resources Management.

Context

In sub-Saharan Africa, the unemployment rate is around 7.3%, and mainly affects young people. This is largely due to the existing gap between training courses and the real needs of companies on the ground. More specifically, businesses complain about the lack of professionalization provided by existing institutions.

The entrepreneur

Pigier Cameroun was created in 2011 by Dr Henri TAFOU, an education entrepreneur, who has held several positions as Regional Sales Director, Marketing Director, Commercial Advisor and General Manager in several companies in Cameroon.

For more than 25 years, he has gained expertise in the education sector, with multinational experiences: He worked within the Pigier Group in Côte d'Ivoire as Sales Director in charge of continuing education. After that, he joined the head office of the PIGIER brand in France as Director of Franchise Development; and went back to Africa by becoming the first African to benefit from a PIGIER franchise in Africa, through the takeover of the Cotonou franchise in Benin. During his management in Benin, he succeeded in having the franchise certified to the ISO 9001 standard, making Pigier Bénin the very first business school in Sub-Saharan Africa to obtain this certification.

In 2011, he sold the Benin franchise and returned to Cameroon to launch Pigier Cameroon, the very first PIGIER franchise in Central Africa.

Partnership with I&P

I&P partners with Pigier Cameroun through its fund I&P Afrique Entrepreneurs 2 (IPAE 2). I&P provides patient financing, technical assistance, and strategic/operational support to strengthen the structuring of the company.

The partnership notably addresses the following issues:

—⇒ Consolidating the company’s achievements and ensuring the continuous improvement of its academic training programs

—⇒ Strengthening its positioning in the market in order to serve a greater number of learners and business professionals

—⇒ Strengthening the company’s governance, as well as its operational performance

Expected Impacts

Social impacts:

• Increasing the number of learners and graduates trained by Pigier Cameroon

• Improving the employability rate of graduates of Pigier Cameroon,

• Improving the capacities and skills of business professionals

• Creating jobs and securing created and/or existing jobs

—Governance impacts:

• Strengthening the company’s governance

• Improving the company's strategy

Dakar American University of Science and Technology (DAUST) is a private higher education institution offering a 4-year engineering program, masterclasses dedicated to professionals in the sector and a "prep" program with international opportunities. The specialties taught are chemistry and biomolecules, civil and environmental engineering, electronic and computer engineering and finally mechanical and aeronautical engineering.

THE ENTREPRENEUR

DAUST was founded by Sidy NDAO, a 38-year-old Senegalese born and raised in Dakar before going to continue his studies in the United States. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska and a post-doc from MIT, he is an engineer specialized in mechanics and robotics. He returned to Senegal in 2009 to engage in the promotion of STEMs (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics) in Africa. 

I&P' CONTRIBUTION

DAUST benefits from support through the I&P Acceleration in Sahel program dedicated to education and employment (IP2E). The funding and support will enable the university to increase its hosting capacity while attracting an international clientele.

EXPECTED IMPACTS 

• Increase its hosting capacity by 115%
• Move in a third classroom with a capacity of 30 students
• Deploy a marketing and communication campaign in about 20 African countries

The Institut Académique des Bébés (IAB) is a training school dedicated to the professional and technical training of children's professions. At the end of a one-year course, a professional certificate of specialization, issued by the Ministry of Training, is delivered to learners, allowing them to be employed as facilitators, educational assistants or assistants in nurseries, maternity wards, leisure centers or at private homes. The Academic Institute of Babies also has crèches for children aged 3 to 19 months. 

THE ENTREPRENEUR

IAB was founded by Fa Diallo, a Senegalese-Guinean woman who grew up in Senegal before moving to France to study finance/accounting. Fa Diallo worked for a long time in accounting and finance while taking early childhood training. She has worked for more than 10 years in local authorities on early childhood issues, notably in Nancy's day care centers, at the Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs de Nancy and at Nancy's regional maternity hospital. Fa returned to Senegal in 2016 and began the process of starting the Institut Académique des Bébés in 2017. 

I&P' CONTRIBUTION

IAB benefits from support through the I&P Acceleration in Sahel program dedicated to education and employment (IP2E).

EXPECTED IMPACTS 

IAB's funding and support is aimed at : 

• Increase its capacity: space for an additional classroom that will increase the capacity by 50%
• Set up a laboratory daycare that can accommodate 11 babies (from 3 to 18 months)
• Develop an online platform in order to make accessible to learners living in the regions
• Recruit staff to strengthen the current team