Africa innovation strategy enters new phase

On 28 July in Tunis, the 14 teams that reached the final stage had the opportunity to pitch their projects to a jury comprising some of Société Générale Group’s senior managers.

After much discussion, the following three teams stood out above their peers and received the votes of the jury:

In first place was the team from Tunisia with “Customer Care”, a mobile app that analyses customer data and follows customers as they move around to offer them personalised banking services.

In second place was the team from Cameroon with its “KYC Robot”, an IT system that automates the regular review of the KYC files for business customers.

In third place was the team from Guinea with “Mobile Advisor” an app that enables individual customers to access banking products and services and make transactions on their mobile phone.

The prize for the Tunisian team is a learning expedition in the Paris ecosystem, and the three projects will be “incubated” in the Société Générale Lab in Dakar that was set up at the start of the year, with a view to being rolled out in one or more of the Group’s African subsidiaries.

“After launching a Lab in Dakar and holding our first pan-African hackathon open to developers and start-ups, from which the winning projects are undergoing testing in our Lab and will be launched at the end of the year in three of our subsidiaries, this new challenge has enabled us to give Société Générale’s employees in Africa free reign to play a leading role in our digital transformation and customer satisfaction initiatives. This challenge has given rise to new ideas that we hope will be quickly rolled out to our subsidiaries. Innovation is a key driver of our development strategy in Africa, and we aim to continue to work with the innovative ecosystems that are being built together with the Bank’s employees”, commented Alexandre Maymat, Head of the Africa Region for Société Générale Group.