On march 15th, Station F hosted the Afrobytes conference on the eve of Vivatech 2019. This 4th edition was crowned with success, with over 400 visitors and 40 start-ups attending. The entire Bizao Sales Team was there to participate in the event.
This was for us an occasion to meet the main players in the African digital economy, start-ups in every domain and big companies like Paypal, american leader for online payments. Many African countries were represented, such as South Africa, Morocco, Ethopia, Ghana, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Nigeria.
The “Pitch my country”, timed presentation, enabled us to better know the honoured countries and identify new business opportunities. Many important digital actors where there to discuss, through B2B meetings, on topics like AI, blockchain and 5G.
Another big take away from this event was the panel on “Future Payments”, featurnig Damien Perillat (General Manager Western Europe, Paypal), Aziz Yerima (Co-founder & CEO, Paydunia), Andrew Takyi-Appiahz (Managing Director, Zeepay Ghana) and Aurélien Duval-Delort (CEO,Bizao). One of the issues of this panel was the differences between english-speaking and french-speaking fintech start-ups. It was concluded that while the English-speaking start-ups have been performing better than French-speaking ones lately, the tables might be turning. Indeed, the francophone start-ups are often bilingual and used to working with small countries that have different regulations and currencies. These assets facilitate crossing borders and might lead to an emergence in the french fintech market.
Station F being the world’s largest start-up incubator, gathers the biggest digital companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, etc. It is the perfect place for a convention such as Afrobytes. We are very much looking forward for next year’s edition.
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