CDC-CI Capital, the investment arm of Côte d’Ivoire’s public deposit and consignment fund, has deployed a further CFA720 million ($1.2 million) into eight local startups, marking the latest salvo in a government-backed campaign to accelerate the country’s technology ecosystem and create white-collar jobs for its youthful population.
The seed grants, ranging from CFA45 million to CFA100 million, were announced on Wednesday at the closing ceremony of the third National Employment and Recruitment Fair (FNER) in Abidjan’s Treichville district. The event was presided over by vice-premier and defence minister Téné Birahima Ouattara, and the funds were channeled through a dedicated programme run jointly by CDC-CI Capital and the Youth Employment Agency (Agence Emploi Jeunes).
The fresh commitments lift CDC-CI Capital’s total disclosed start-up investments over the past 12 months to at least CFA2.6 billion, underscoring the fund’s emergence as the most active domestic investor in a francophone West African market where early-stage risk capital remains scarce.
Of all eight beneficiaries that were disclosed, three companies were tech companies. Ecole Pay, a school-fee digitisation platform founded by Jean-Philippe Lasme, received the maximum CFA100 million. ADES (Agence de Développement de l’E-Santé), a healthtech venture operating the UMED telemedicine and home-care network, also secured CFA100 million. Flot, a mobility start-up incubated by Mstudio that offers ride-hailing drivers a path to electric vehicle ownership with zero upfront deposit, obtained CFA65 million.
The funding is distinct from the venture capital-style equity and convertible-bond deals CDC-CI Capital has struck previously. The eight recipients were drawn from the first cohort of the “Programme d’Appui à l’Écosystème des Startups” — a seeding facility designed to help very young, innovative companies structure their operations, acquire initial customers and position themselves for larger investment rounds. In addition to cash grants, the programme provides mentoring and technical assistance, officials said at the fair.
“This edition of FNER has mobilised more than 88,000 insertion opportunities for young Ivorians,” youth employment minister Mamadou Touré told the crowd. Those who were not immediately placed, he added, would be offered training, internships or retraining pathways. Thirteen individual entrepreneurs were awarded smaller prizes of between CFA962,100 and CFA16 million during the same event, reflecting the broader push to dignify self-employment.
A deliberate institution-building mandate
CDC-CI Capital was established in 2020 as the investment subsidiary of the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations de Côte d’Ivoire (CDC-CI), a public financial institution modelled on France’s storied Caisse des Dépôts. The fund’s venture operations are largely financed by the World Bank through the Competitive Value Chains for Employment and Economic Transformation Project (PCCET), a $200 million multi-year programme that targets job creation by strengthening selected value chains, with technology and innovation as a cross-cutting priority.
The spree began in earnest in mid-2025. In July of that year, CDC-CI Capital committed CFA800 million to the fintech Djamo, which focuses on banking underbanked consumers through a mobile-first current account. Three months later, in October, it put another CFA800 million in convertible bonds into Julaya, a business-to-business payments platform that had just obtained a crucial Payment Establishment licence from the Banque Centrale des États de l’Afrique de l’Ouest (BCEAO). The same month, it closed a CFA350 million equity investment in ADES to modernise its digital platform and expand a fleet of home-visit medical vehicles.
The fresh CFA100 million award to ADES at FNER 2026 therefore represents a follow-on injection, bringing the state investor’s total exposure to the e-health company to CFA450 million. Dr Ousmane Soumahoro, ADES’s co-founder and medical director, said the earlier capital had already allowed his team to sign up more than 50 corporate clients for staff medical monitoring and to carry out thousands of home interventions. The new grant would be used to deepen its laboratory partnerships and add specialist teleconsultations, he indicated.
Flot, the mobility startup, pitches itself as a financial inclusion play. Drivers on platforms such as Yango or Uber obtain an electric vehicle with no down payment, make daily micro-repayments via mobile money calibrated to their actual earnings, and become full owners after 36 months. The CFA65 million injection is intended to expand Flot’s pilot fleet in Abidjan and validate the credit model before seeking larger institutional backing. The venture is housed within Mstudio, an independent startup venture studio by entrepreneurs Cédric Mangaud and Leslie Ossete.
Ecole Pay, the third named recipient, tackles a stubborn friction in Ivorian education: the collection of school fees, which still relies heavily on cash and manual receipts. Its platform allows parents to pay digitally while giving schools a real-time ledger, reducing leakage and administrative burden.
Filling a financing vacuum
CDC-CI Capital’s pace of deployment is striking in a region where seed and Series A activity remains heavily dependent on foreign venture capital funds and development finance institutions. Data from the African Private Equity and Venture Capital Association show that francophone West Africa attracted less than 6 per cent of total African venture capital deal volume in 2025, with the overwhelming bulk concentrated in Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa and Egypt.
“Public money is playing an outsized catalytic role here, and that is by design,” said a person familiar with the PCCET architecture, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to comment publicly. “The government wants to create visible success stories that can crowd in private investors later. They’re writing relatively small cheques to a broad cohort, then doubling down on the ones that gain traction.”
This portfolio approach is visible in the treatment of ADES and could be repeated with other alumni of the seed programme. CDC-CI Capital chief executive Arthur Coulibaly has previously said the fund aims to hold stakes for between five and seven years, targeting returns that would allow it to recycle capital and prove that francophone African tech can be a viable asset class.
Still, risks abound. Few Ivorian startups have yet reached the scale needed to attract an exit — either through a trade sale or an initial public offering on the regional BRVM bourse — and the local pipeline of follow-on capital thins out sharply above the $1 million ticket size. Macroeconomic headwinds, including stubborn inflation and a strong dollar that fuels imported input costs, could also test the business models of young consumer-facing platforms.
Vice-premier Ouattara, speaking at the FNER closing, sought to reassure young entrepreneurs that the state would stay the course. The government, he said, was determined to “strengthen employability, professional insertion and youth entrepreneurship across the entire national territory.” Additional support programmes for start-ups operating outside the economic capital were being designed, he added without giving specifics.
A window into industrial policy
The start-up push also fits into a broader Ivorian industrial policy that views technology as a lever to modernise legacy sectors. Julaya’s payments rails are being plugged into the government’s drive to digitise tax collection and supplier payments; ADES’s telemedicine platform is seen as a complement to strained public health infrastructure; and Flot’s electric vehicles sit at the intersection of the state’s ambitions in green mobility and digital financial services.
For now, the sums involved remain modest relative to the scale of the youth employment challenge. Côte d’Ivoire’s working-age population is growing by roughly 400,000 people annually, and formal job creation trails far behind. The 88,000 insertion opportunities flagged by Minister Touré at the fair — a figure that includes internships, training slots and part-time placements — illustrates both the scale of the effort and the difficulty of absorbing the demographic wave.
Nevertheless, the steady drip of CDC-CI Capital announcements over the past year has altered the conversation among Abidjan’s small but ambitious founder community. “When the state invests in your start-up, it’s a signal that the regulatory environment will not be hostile — and that is almost as valuable as the money,” said a founder who has received funding and who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of government relations.
The next test will be whether these young companies can convert public patronage into commercial traction deep enough to attract private venture dollars, and whether CDC-CI Capital can maintain its cadence of investment as the PCCET facility matures. For an ecosystem accustomed to seeing funding announcements fizzle after one cycle, the institution’s emergence as a repeat, multi-sector backer is a tangible — if still unproven — shift in the landscape.