Every year, several thousand French-speaking Africans cross the ocean to study in Quebec, during a university course or professional training. After training, some stay to meet the needs of the local job market, others return to their country of origin to benefit from the skills acquired. In both cases, the links that can be maintained between the province of La Belle and the French-speaking part of the continent are only strengthened. The meeting with three of these Africans who made the great transatlantic leap, for a stay of several months or a few years that changed their lives.
Sophie Diallo – The good fairy of young people
It was in Quebec that Sophie Diallo discovered her own America. From her passage across the Atlantic, she only has “extraordinary” memories, such as winter that, for her, “only existed in Grimm’s tales”. Her story has a happy ending, as, at 44 years old, Sophie Diallo is General Director of the Vocational and Technical Training Financing Fund (3FPT), in Senegal, a position for which she was intimately nominated by President Macky Sall, in March 2022.
For there young woman, awarded the prestigious Gold Medal from the Governor General of Canada in 2019, “the impossible does not exist”. And his visit to Quebec only confirmed this.
A brilliant student at Gaston-Berger University, in Saint-Louis, Sophie Diallo benefited, in 2016, from the Canadian Francophonie Scholarship Program, which she entered at the National School of Public Administration (Enap). In Quebec City, she delves into the notions of “emotional intelligence” and “transformational leadership”, in which she sees confirmation “that each person must act as an actor in their own change”.
Master in information systems and networks from the François-Rabelais University of Tours (France) and master in public administration, Sophie Diallo is today, at the head of 3FPT, one of the main players in the transformations to be carried out to promote the entry of young people Senegalese in the job market. Sometimes in synergy with Quebec, “whose quality of its training system is recognized”, as its own trajectory attests.
Laetitia Gadegbeku-Ouattara – A golden experience
Laetitia Gadegbeku-Ouattara is still convinced of this today: when leaving to study in Quebec, she made “the best possible choice”. His professional trajectory seems to confirm this. At 44 years old, this Ivorian is national director of the Canadian group Endeavor Mining, which explores six mines on the African continent and is one of the largest gold producers in the world.
The only woman to hold such a position in her country, she is also the first woman to have risen to the vice-presidency of the Professional Mining Association of Côte d'Ivoire, which earned her recognition from the British organization Women In Mining UK, which in 2022 included her in its list of the hundred most influential women in this sector “remained very masculine”. A distinction he attributes to his time at Quebec, at one of “the best universities in the world”.
After high school at Sainte-Marie secondary school in Cocody, she went to Canada in 2001. She obtained a bachelor's degree in marketing from the University of Quebec in Trois-Rivières, then an MBA in international business from Laval University. She completed her training with a certificate in corporate social responsibility (CSR) at McGill University.
Laetitia Gadegbeku-Ouattara could then have decided to return to Côte d'Ivoire, but she was recruited by ING Canada, where she became regional director. she She stayed there for five years, before returning home in 2010. But even in Abidjan, she continues to work on behalf of her adopted country. She became an economic and commercial advisor for the mining, oil and energy sector at the Canadian Embassy in Côte d'Ivoire. Ten years later, she joined Endeavor Mining.
Today, a self-confessed young woman will always be inspired by her stay in North America, where she goes every year to see her friends and continue to immerse herself in this “Quebec culture” that she adopted a few years ago.
Ossey Bernard Yapo – He sees life in green
Ossey Bernard Yapo passed away just a few months in Quebec in the early 2000s, at the time of two enrolled at the National Institute for Scientific Research (INRS), the only university institution in Quebec focused exclusively on research and training in postgraduate cycles.
“This passage, although brief, strongly influenced my scientific work”, says today the bold fifty-year-old, who has also maintained “excellent relationships with many INRS professors and researchers” on the other side of the Atlantic. Arriving at the campus of the Water-Terre-Environment Center (ETE), which, within the institute, specializes in environmental issues, Ossey Bernard Yapo is still just a young scientist who has just completed his thesis at the University of Abobo-Adjamé.
Strong in the subject, it is already loaded with diplomas, mathematics, physics and chemistry. This is part of the first promotion of the Training and Research Unit (UFR) of Environmental Sciences and Management at Nangui-Abrogoua University (UNA), with the option “chemistry of aquatic environments”. “Constituted in the wake of the Rio Summit [in 1992], this UFR had from the beginning the mission of focusing on environmental issues. When we looked for experts in the area, we quickly identified INRS”, explains Ossey Bernard Yapo, now full professor of environmental and analytical chemistry at UFR.
From his stay in Quebec, he who is also deputy director of the central environmental laboratory of the Ivory Coast Anti-Pollution Center (Ciapol) and a consultant for the World Bank maintains the image of a “green city”. And I understand that several of your African colleagues choose to stay there. Not like him. “I had to pass on to subsequent generations what I learned For INRS. »
