We had the opportunity to interview Florent Youzan, a web entrepreneur and founder of the Afriworkers network, a platform that promotes employment in Africa through teleworking, coworking, and the pooling of skills. A major player in the development of ICT in Africa, Florent Youzan shares with us his analysis of the emergence of new forms of work in Côte d’Ivoire, and more broadly in West Africa — their impact on the economy and their potential evolution in this era of nomadism made possible by new technologies.
Could you introduce yourself?
I am Florent YOUZAN, a computer engineer by training, software architect, and specialist in IT project management. Today, as a web entrepreneur and an advocate for Africa’s development through ICT, I lead a community of coworkers and organize mornings dedicated to skill aggregation. I launched the Afriworkers network in February 2011.
What is your role as founder of the Afriworkers network, and what motivated you to create it?
My role within the Afriworkers network is to define strategies for better promoting teleworking and expanding the network across Africa. Afriworkers was born from three simple observations:
The first is that in Abidjan, as in all African capitals, employees spend about two hours a day in traffic jams to get to work — that’s about 20 days lost in traffic every year. Twenty precious days of our lives, unpaid by the employer, which could have been devoted to family or community development projects. Wouldn’t it be possible to allow employees to work remotely one or two days a week to reduce congestion on our roads?
The second observation is that companies in our African countries often do not hire, not because they don’t want to, but simply due to a lack of office space and equipment. Wouldn’t it be possible to access African talent by allowing them to work from home or from a third space?
The third observation is that in Côte d’Ivoire, we have about 4 million graduates without jobs. Seen differently, that’s 4 million untapped skills. Wouldn’t it be possible to offer these graduates the opportunity to work on remote projects from their homes, specialized centers, or coworking spaces? Could these unemployed people not pool their skills to carry out telework projects? These are simple observations, yet they too often escape our constructive attention.
Could you provide an overview of new work models linked to information technologies in Côte d’Ivoire and West Africa?
In Côte d’Ivoire, as in most West African countries, we are still discovering these new modes of work related to information technologies. Governments have not yet integrated teleworking and coworking into their official agendas. However, individual and associative initiatives are striving to introduce these new models to Africans. Afriworkers in Côte d’Ivoire and Jokkolabs in Senegal are concrete examples of this movement.
Jokkolabs is a laboratory of ideas focused on action. It is driven by a learning community of dynamic entrepreneurs — catalysts and changemakers — who invest in tomorrow’s challenges to create positive change and build a better world. This dynamic is organized around a virtual space and coworking environments.
Afriworkers offers several services to companies, job seekers, graduates, and anyone willing to work remotely:
- A directory of African teleworkers
- Formation of remote work teams (team building and skill aggregation)
- Coaching and training
- Publication of a teleworking guide
- Distribution of several training videos on the benefits of telework
- Remote job offers with SMS alerts across 13 African countries
- Organization of coworking mornings
The coworking mornings organized by Afriworkers in Abidjan will soon expand to Burkina Faso and the DRC. These mornings are real opportunities for skill sharing, fostering a genuine coworker network that encourages collaboration, cooperation, creativity, and social innovation.
Are coworking and teleworking drivers of economic growth in Côte d’Ivoire?
Some teleworkers from the Afriworkers network have successfully completed remote assignments, and every day we receive new teleworker profiles as well as new remote job offers. Working in an office is no longer the only reliable option for Ivorian youth, who have found in teleworking a better way to express their skills.
The first coworking morning in Abidjan was a huge success. We expected fewer than ten people but ended up with over thirty-five participants — far beyond our expectations. The enthusiasm was tangible and revealing. During these coworking mornings, affinities form, professional relationships are built, and teleworking projects are born. eWorking Group, Numeric+, Doolawi Network, and AESUS IT are some of the success stories that demonstrate the impact of teleworking and coworking in Côte d’Ivoire.
We can therefore confidently say that teleworking and coworking are indeed drivers of economic growth, both for Côte d’Ivoire and for Africa as a whole. Our continent stands to gain greatly from promoting these new modes of work organization.
What is your assessment of the digital divide in Côte d’Ivoire and West Africa?
In Côte d’Ivoire, as in West Africa, we face a double digital divide. The first is between European capitals and our African capitals; the second is internal — between our capitals and secondary cities. Our governments are working to provide technological tools to local communities, while the Afriworkers network promotes digital solidarity initiatives and prepares communities to receive not only this technology transfer but also new working methods and skill-sharing models. It may still be too early to speak of a full-fledged technological development in Africa, but the goal is to move toward greater progress — and intelligent minds are joining forces to make that happen.
What are your expectations for the future development of these new work models in Côte d’Ivoire?
I cannot give precise forecasts for the development of these new modes of work in Côte d’Ivoire, but I can say that initiatives like Afriworkers are working to bring teleworking and coworking into the spotlight. Our mission is now focused on concrete actions, and results will soon be made public.
Breaking away from the traditional logic of a fixed time and place for work, Afriworkers offers new employment perspectives in Africa. By enabling self-employment and remote work, we are contributing, in our own way, to reducing unemployment, poverty, and the digital divide. By fostering skill sharing across Africa and creating coworking spaces for teleworkers, we can write a new chapter in our economic story through telework and coworking. In the coming years, we will make teleworking and coworking true levers for development in Côte d’Ivoire in particular, and in Africa in general.
Source: The Eworky Blog