Friday, June 2, the Gitex Africa, the first exhibition dedicated to African innovation, closed its doors in Marrakech. The event is an offshoot of Gitex, equivalent for the United Arab Emirates to what is the Consumer Electronic Show in the United States or Viva Tech in Europe. So many events dedicated to technology that all have the same goal: to attract investment. During an intervention, Thursday 1er June, the governor of Lagos (Nigeria), Babajide Sanwo-Olu, wanted to be very convincing in promising that Africa was on the right track to “becoming the next Silicon Valley”.
In view of the dynamics at work on the African technological scene, dominated by countries such as Nigeria, Egypt or Kenya, the choice of Morocco for the first edition of this event seems surprising. Mehdi El Alaoui, head of the Moroccan Digital Development Agency, acknowledges this: “The country’s ecosystem is still quite young”. The decision owes a lot to good relations with the Emirates.
Failing to be one of the champions of the continent, Morocco is the illustration of a country aware of the path it still has to go. In his inaugural speech, the head of the Moroccan government, Aziz Akhannouch, recalled that “In a rapidly changing world, digital technology is crucial for the development of Africa”. And listed the challenges to overcome to win this battle: “encouraging innovation and investment”developing infrastructure and talent, etc.
500,000 developers in Morocco
On the training side, Morocco is particularly well endowed, with 500,000 developers according to Mr. Alaoui. It can rely on the support of large groups such as Amazon, Microsoft, Orange to continue to feed its pool. The proliferation of start-ups is very real, like Guichet.coman online ticketing service (concerts, shows, cinema, football, etc.) which has established itself as the leader in its country and aims to be number one in nine French-speaking markets by 2026.
Like many start-ups in the region, Guichet.com took advantage of the absence of digital solutions – or the inadequacy of existing solutions – to meet user needs.
For example, the artificial intelligence developed by MajestEYE for its customers – mainly banks and insurance companies – who for the most part do not have access to large computing powers or large volumes of data to develop a model. predictive. Hence the idea of this solution, less greedy in resources but which wants to be just as effective. Present in the Maghreb, and already in Europe, MajestEYE is now looking towards sub-Saharan Africa.
You have 55.5% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.