MALI EXPORTED TALENT; NOW CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF ORANGE BOTSWANA SEEKS TO SPOTLIGHT SYNERGIES BETWEEN STARTUPS AND MOBILE OPERATORS IN BOTSWANA
MALI EXPORTED TALENT; NOW CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF ORANGE BOTSWANA SEEKS TO SPOTLIGHT SYNERGIES BETWEEN STARTUPS AND MOBILE OPERATORS IN BOTSWANA
Nene Maiga is the NEW new chief executive of Orange Botswana. Best defined as ‘Passionate about Africa, Tech & Innovation’. She deserves a sit at the table in the Botswana startup ecosystem. She got a personal warm welcome from us NGWANA AFRICA
1. Néné Maïga is a 35 year old woman from the Timbuktu region of Mali. She began her career in France as a consultant before coming back to the continent of the future: Africa. She represents the potential of exporting talent across Africa for building tech that can be replicated and she brings in startup competency and corporate skill- a lacking an unappreciated commodity in our startup -corporate synergies.
2. Néné Maïga has been the Chief of Staff to the CEO of Orange Middle East and Africa since 2018. This position gave her the opportunity to work on projects for the group whole African footprint, and to contribute to a more efficient and inclusive company. She was recently appointed Chief Executive of Orange Botswana. Previously, she was the CEO of Orange Finances Mobiles Mali, the electronic wallet used by half of adult Malians for financial inclusion. She led outstanding growth of the business, by massively recruiting customers and launching new innovative offers: instant loans, international remittances, contactless payment etc. She holds a Master’s degree in Management from the HEC Paris Grande Ecole programme.
3. Key to building the startup-mobile operators relationship is to understand the four points below ;
-Understand the industry — discover key mobile industry trends and how they affect their business
- Understand your market — identify their market challenges and opportunities to address mobile operator needs
- Pitch to mobile operators — identify the right stakeholders, craft a strong pitch and prepare for successful negotiations
- Make the collaboration work — learn how to track progress and manage the mobile operator relationship
4. In our startup ecosystem we identify that there is a need for a programme that focuses on bridging the gap between mobile operators and start-ups, enabling strong partnerships that foster the growth of innovative mobile products and services. This could be a challenge to take on Madam!
5. There are several obstacles to creating partnerships such as speed,lack of formal processes, and inability to gather information. Therefore,the value proposition of our Accelerator have been to lobby that mobile operators create this startup-mobile operation portion of building synergies platform to help mobile operators and start-ups better collaborate and partner up, to help grow technology ecosystems and scale digital solutions. This will require a collaborative ecosystem blueprint that is standard to all mobile operators — but with the view to make startups an attractive partner of priority choice.
6. New leaders are alive to the presence of startups- this validates there is interest from diverse corporate executives. This energy needs to be tapped into with a clear KPIs on both sides.
7. There is something big on the horizon, and its coming in the form of mobile operators and startups collaborating… Botswana based startups should tap into this energy.
8. What does accelerated digital partnerships between startups and mobile operators look like? Is is about customers or is about access to corporate venture capital fund? We know about Orange Ventures- what can it do for startups in Botswana?
There is a window of opportunity here- keep building!
Keep building — NGWANA AFRICA
