Boni Julie Yolande, receiving her trophy for best inventor of the year from the hands of the Consul of Israel in Côte d'Ivoire

Boni Julie Yolande is the inventor of the year in Côte d'Ivoire. She won the Israeli grand prize at the end of the 3rd edition of Abidjan Innova, the invention and innovation fair, held from March 25 to 27, 2021. This woman caught the attention of the jury for producing a cocoa infusion and coating it with cocoa beans in different flavors.

“The next step is to move on to industrialization, but that's no small feat. Getting to where we are today has not been easy. Perhaps with this prize, the partners will accompany us” she maintains between joy and faith.

Like Yolande, Charles Abycè, inventor of a traffic accident prevention device, also hopes to win the sesame to move to large-scale production and meet the needs of his market.

Charles Abycè and his invention with an anti-collision system and a hybrid camera that gives the distance between two vehicles and…

“We have orders in France, the United States, Benin, Côte d'Ivoire and all over Africa. The question of financing is our great difficulty. It is really thorny,” admits this young Ivorian with a degree in Economics and Management.

If these actors evoke the same obstacle to the flight of their sector, others advance the lack of school program to arouse, from an early age, an interest in invention and innovation. Some observers even speak of the Ivorian's lack of attachment to local products, which creates the problem of domestic consumption. Not to mention counterfeiting which, sometimes in full view of everyone, “kills” the national industry.

…delivers a message to avoid proximity accidents like here in the picture

Despite everything, the Federation of Inventors and Innovators of Côte d'Ivoire, FEDINCI, wants to be optimistic and intends to create, at all costs, national champions. Models of success which, subsequently, will pull the whole sector upwards.

"We will, through the Invention and Innovation Management Agency, pool our strengths and ensure that certain inventions become success stories and that they are recognized sources of financial income, here as elsewhere. . Thus, we will be able to count inventors and innovators among the rich in Côte d'Ivoire and this will arouse enthusiasm for the sector, as was the case with football and music”, reveals Coulibaly Pierre Jibril, President of FEDINCI.

Alongside this initiative, the Federation of Inventors and Innovators of Côte d'Ivoire says it is committed to continuing lobbying and negotiation to make itself understood by politicians, investors and other financial partners and to accept populations for the promotion of invention and innovation.

LAWANI Babatunde