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EMERGING Valley, the meeting place for African tech
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EMERGING Valley is a must-attend event in France and Europe to stimulate innovation, support startups and encourage technological investment between Africa and Europe. Launched in 2017 and based in Aix-Marseille-Provence, a strategic area at the crossroads of two continents, EMERGING Valley offers a privileged environment to explore tomorrow's innovations, meet the players behind them and collaborate on developing solutions to major global challenges. Expertise France has been taking part for nearly 5 years.
Every year since 2021, Expertise France has been working at EMERGING Valley, in the heart of the Aix-Marseille-Provence metropolitan area
The fourth edition of this not-to-be-missed event in Provence placed digital technology at the heart of global development issues. As France's public agency for international technical cooperation, Expertise France had the opportunity to play a full part in this theme, notably by reaffirming its commitment alongside the European Union to support partner countries in their digital transition, notably via the D4D Hub, but also through regional and national initiatives such as those in Niger, Tunisia and Libya.
Since 2022, Expertise France has been fully integrated into the EMERGING Valley programme, taking part in three main stages: the Main Stage (high-level plenary conference format), the Impact Stage (workshop format), and the Co-Innovation Lab Stage (immersive format with podcast recording). In 2022, the MEET Africa and GREENOV'I projects were in the spotlight, while Séverine Peters-Desteract, Director of the Sustainable and Inclusive Economy Department, spoke on the Main Stage about Expertise France's support for Senegal's artificial intelligence and digital strategy.
In 2023, Expertise France focused on three themes: artificial intelligence as a transformer of the African economy at the main stage, e-sport as a vector for development at the Co-Innovation Lab, and the challenges of ‘green tech’, sustainable and environmentally-friendly innovation on the Impact stage. It was also an opportunity to highlight several of the agency's flagship projects, including the GREENOV'I project, which gave the floor to three green start-ups with innovative and valuable projects for the climate.
The next edition of this tech summit will be held on 26 November 2025 at TheCamp, in Aix-en-Provence, with four main themes: innovative financing for cross-border start-ups, the ethical and sustainable challenges of artificial intelligence, scaling up African and European start-ups, and the ‘Positive Mediterranean’ partnership between AFD Group and EMERGING Valley to promote cross-Mediterranean cooperation.
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