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The industrial accompaniment programme with Africa and the Mediterranean is implemented, for the period 2002-2004, by Entreprises & Développement, a network of regional French operators. It is actively supported by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Centre pour le développement de l'Entreprise (Centre for Corporate Development or CDE) in Brussels.
How the Industrial Accompaniment method works
Open to French and African SMFs, the programme fosters contact between managers of industrial companies working in the same field.
By pairing North/South industrialists in the same trade, these contacts set out to promote and establish intercorporate partnerships of all natures (commercial, technological, financial), based on these relations between producers.
The programme provides selected companies with individual guidance ranging from identification of possible partners to location of financial sources.
Over the past five years, 132 'pairs' of SMFs from France, North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa have benefited from this approach through programmes set up by E&D. In 1998, a thoroughly positive evaluation of an initial industrial accompaniment programme was carried out by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Companies concerned
The programme targets small or medium-sized industrial French and African companies, already operating and selected by those in charge of the programme.
For southern countries, the company must have plant and production machinery in operation and must be ready and eager to implement a development project (modernisation, diversification or extension) concerning its existing business.
For France, the company must be willing and ready to undertake an industrial accompaniment mission in which it will contribute its professional expertise to the project presented and to establish partnership relations with the southern company.
This programme covers all sectors of industrial production and services.
Financing of an initial mission and the industrial accompaniment
The programme finances the direct costs (travel and accommodation in the south) of an industrial accompaniment mission undertaken by the French company manager, generally accompanied by the project leader, to meet the southern company.
For the French manager, the objectives for this mission to Africa, which lasts five days on average, are as follows :
- to draft a technical recommendations file on the existing southern production plant and machinery ;
- to supply a certain amount of immediate, practical advice ;
- to participate in drawing up a pre-feasibility study for the project in question.
A Project Manager
A French project manager, financed by the programme and working under the authority of the E&D network, is put at the disposal of each pair of companies formed. This applies for each geographical zone.
These project managers are charged with the task of short-listing the French and African candidate companies, of preparing visits and guiding each 'pair' of company managers during visits, of helping draft the development plan for the southern partner and mapping out their collaboration project.
Improved access to sources of finance
These industrial accompaniment missions are intended to lead on to technical, economic and commercial partnership projects which, to take shape, may apply to existing French and European financing sources open to private enterprise in developing countries, notably the support funds of the Brussels CDE for sub-Saharan Africa..
E&D provides support for application files to be presented to specialist financial institutions.
The Entreprises & Développement network
Founded in 1992, the association Entreprises & Développement is a decentralised network of initiatives for North/South industrial partnerships. It is composed of public and semi-public entities which specialise in fostering and guiding partnerships of this kind.
E&D includes, in 2001 : the ADECI in Marseilles for the Provence-Alps-Riviera region, the France-Pas-de-Calais region, the INTERCO for the Aquitaine region, the IPAd for Rouen, the IRCOD for the Champagne-Ardennes region and the IRCOD for Alsace.
The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs contributes to the financing of this programme.
The Centre pour le développement de l'Entreprise (Centre for Corporate Development or CDE) in Brussels supports follow-up of industrial accompaniment missions.
For further information (from outside France, dial international, 33 and omit the initial 0 in the numbers given)
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