Translations

The numerical company JOKKOLABS develops coworking workshops in Africa

1. Organizational Governance

Strategy and organization

Sector Telecommunication, Medias, ITC

Year 2016

Country Senegal

Transmitter

Context

Jokkolabs, a numerical company, was created in 2010 in Dakar, Senegal. It is present in 9 African countries and in France. It is an independent not-profit organization whose mission is to undertake and innovate otherwise.
Inspired by the culture of open source and free software, Jokkolabs invented a new way of working around coworking space. Jokkolabs activities revolve between virtual exchanges online and physical work in common space. The crossing of knowledge of different sectors of activity, of generations of know-how allows to innovate in areas also as diverse as health, agriculture, education, or new media.
The key values of those innovation spaces are sharing, open-mindedness, collaboration and creativity.

Objectives

Simulate the creativity and the innovation by creating collaborative spaces
Create a collective intelligence to find solutions together
Reinvent the economic growth through networks
Find a new way to do business in a collaborative way

APPROACH

1. Establish the network / create the community
Jokkolabs mixes the spirits of “techlabs”, « innovation hub », coworking space, incubators and « think tank ». It created 6 spaces, involves 250 coworkers and 3000 followers and holds 300 events with 100 companies in 8 countries. A community of entrepreneurs, creators and innovators who make and innovate differently together!

2. Dissemination/Support
Jokkolabs supports the development of professional tech communities inspired by the open-source culture, which form the basis of their new economy. Members are offered quality setting where they can work, meet, collaborate, network, learn and have fun. Everyone has the opportunity to take advantage of the well-designed community innovation process enhanced by the diversity and talents are therefore liberated with active participation to the community life.

3. Partnerships
Establishment of partnerships to complete projects with GOOGLE for his Fab lab or with the European Union for a project that allowed to compile and view on an interactive map data’s and testimonies on the first voting round of the Senegalese presidential election on February 26th 2015.

CONTRIBUTION TO COMPANY PERFORMANCE

The company is actually running two different kind of projects; non-profit and profitable ones.
Concerning profitable projects, some inventions such as SIG have generated a value of almost 2 Million euros starting with a small investment of 900 euro.
Sometimes a participation fee is asked, for attending some labs, especially the ones about new tools and technologies.
Referring to non-profitable ones, they are engaged in social activities such as the involvement of students who does not have enough resources to pay the labs.

Benefits

Climate Reality Leadership: the company is involved in making conferences and labs in order to sensibilise people regarding to a sustainable economy for the environment.
FOSFFA: is the promotion of free digital tools in the African development.
Startup Weekend project: the project is running since 2011, and has inspired more than 1500 youth in going ahead with their projects. By making relationships among participants who have different backgrounds, they give them the tools to succeed with their ideas.