[SOMMET DE LA FRANCOPHONIE 2024]
PARIS – Immersion this Thursday in the FrancoTech innovation fair where, on the eve of the Francophonie Summit, Franco-Ontarian entrepreneurs are creating a surprise and trying to build international business relationships.
Romania, Senegal, Quebec, Ivory Coast… To reach Ontario’s showcase at the FrancoTech show, you have to navigate a maze of national kiosks and economic development agencies teeming with a thousand entrepreneurs and French-speaking investors from several dozen countries.
We are in the heart of Station F, a former railway depot converted since 2017 into a gigantic start-up business campus, a few steps from the National Library of France. For this very first edition, the province’s economic players managed to get involved in the programming to publicize the advantages of trading with the province.
All around the pavilion, visitors and neighboring exhibitors are discovering the Ontario Francophonie for the first time and cannot believe it. For some, it is an experience as new as it is unexpected. “I didn’t know at all that French was spoken in Ontario. For me, the Francophonie in Canada was just Quebec,” says Xavier, a French investor, spontaneously. And he’s not the only one who thinks this.
Karima Catherine-Goundiam (right), founder of B2BeeMatch. Photo: ONFR/TFO/Rudy Chabannes
It must be said that Ontario only joined the OIF in 2018 and waited until 2022 to actively participate in the Francophonie Summit as an observer member, a title that it wishes to retain for the time being, despite the call from the general secretary to get even more involved.
“We still need to let people abroad know that there are French-speakers in Canada outside of Quebec and, for this simple reason, our presence is essential today,” believes Dominic. Mailloux, president of the Ontario Business Federation.
Around him, business people with diverse backgrounds and horizons, like Karima Catherine-Goundiam, founder of the B2BeeMatch networking platform, who defends Ontario’s main asset: “We are bilingual. We are at the crossroads of the Americas with this double culture of incredible richness. »
Catias Céméus, founder of Kimdja. Photo: ONFR/TFO/Rudy Chabannes
Her neighbor Catia Céméus, founder of the events company Kimdja, agrees. She believes that this identity has forged “a beautiful community of French-speaking entrepreneurs in Ontario which makes it easy to make connections in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. »
Behind her, her delegation colleagues welcome the visitors with open arms, supported by a new site web deployed on touchscreen tablets: ontariopourvous.ca. Its motto sets the tone: Discover the best of Ontario. We learn the essential figures, installation advice or simply excursions and, above all, how to do business in French in the province. Open for business.
“Every time people hear me speak, they ask me if I’m from Montreal. No, I come from Toronto and people are very surprised,” relates Olivier Poitier, founder of GenTech101, a biomedical business consulting company. The businessman takes advantage of this common language to penetrate markets in Switzerland, France, North and sub-Saharan Africa.
Olivier Poitier, founder of GenTech101. Photo: ONFR/TFO/Rudy Chabannes
José Mafra, another entrepreneur, does not hesitate to describe FrancoTech as “the Mecca of entrepreneurship in French. Together with all the organizations in Ontario, it’s excellent to all be moving in the same direction,” he said as the crowd suddenly thickened.
After Quebec Prime Minister François Legault an hour earlier, French President Emmanuel Macron strolls into the living room, arousing curiosity and jostling, and brushing past the Ontario kiosk.
This Friday, Justin Trudeau, the Canadian Prime Minister, will also take an overview of the show before leaving for Villers-Cotterêts, the first stop of the Francophonie Summit. Francotech will continue, for its part, for a second and final day before the end.
