Dr. Elizabeth Kacou is an Ivorian, married mother of two. After graduating in France as a pharmacist, she came back to Ivory Coast in 1981 to
open her own chemistry in 1986. Beyond her vocation as a pharmacist, Dr. Kacou
nourrishes a passion for entrepreneur-ship she enhanced during several management trainings (HEC Paris, HEC Executive Ivory Coast).
In 1993, she is made a member of the Ivorian Order of the Pharmacists.
There she participated in the creation of the Copharm (a pharmacist cooperative gathering more than 300 practitionners) to which she is elected as President. In 1999, Copharm purchased Pharmivoire Nouvelle, then in dire straits. The buyouts coincides with the countries socio-economic crisis.
Elizabeth, became Chairman of the company and then launched a complete restructuration that made of Pharmivoire one of the leaders in the country's pharmaceutics industry.
Following the
recent financing from IPAE fund - among other financial insitutions - Pharmivoire, which is already
the only local producer of soft-packed intravenous fluids, will be able to
increase productivity and competitiveness face to foreign imports. Thus, the company ambitions to
comply with the Ivorian demand and even export to the sub-region.
Laure Djoukam, CEO of CDM (Building inputs - Cameroon)
Laure Djoukam holds a
Finance Analysis MBA from the Kellogg School of Management in Evanston, US and degree in
Accountability and Finances from ESSEC Douala. She decided then to take part throughout her career in the
development of her country and continent.
In 2000, after a few years spent working for an american NGO, she is admitted at Kellogg. Three years later she founded
a consulting agency bridging financing and technical sources with Camerounian SMEs. Within this framework she undertook numerous missions for USAID in Mali, Ivory Coast, Ghana and Tchad. She also worked with
SME financing programs like EXIM BANK and OPIC. In 2009, she joined the IFC (World Bank)
to manage the program GOWE, a 10 million EUR fund supporting women entrepreneurs. Through this program, more than
300 women are trained to the essential role of the enterprise management.
In 2011, she decided to embark on the entrepreneur ship and
took the lead of Carrières du Moungo, a company created by her husband 4 years ago.
