Women entrepreneurship: Fatoumata Ly, Guinean alumni and Tech entrepreneur

The Tech pour toutes (Tech for all) programme was launched to promote gender equality in tech and digital occupations, and to answer the need of gender equality in tech, a professional industry with still a low share of women. In 2023, women were only 27% of staff in digital occupations in France, and only 15% in tech. The Tech pour toutes programme should provide support to 10,000 young women every year in their digital occupation training course with customised support, trainings, an accessible network and material and financial support if need be.

From marketing to health

As the government website points out, “many women did not wait for such announcements to start projects with high added value in economic and social terms, and often with the aim to improve the condition of women in the business world and beyond”. And this is the case of Fatoumata Ly, born in a miners’ town in Kamsar, Guinea, located about three hours away by car from Conakry,

She passed her baccalauréat in Tunisia and arrived in France in 2007. In 2010, she passed a bachelor degree in language sciences at the Paul Valéry - Montpellier 3 university, and a master’s degree in marketing and management of client relations in 2012 in one of the schools from the OMNES Education group. In 2020, after a travel to the US, she decided to settle in France. With a friend of hers, she created the start-up Ninti Health, which aims at raising awareness of companies about the subject of reproductive health (menopause, menstrual cycles, fertility) and women’s mental health. This start-up aims at creating a structure “able to support women marked, like her, by painful experiences in relation with their sexual and reproductive health”.

Solutions for better care

Ninti Health is more precisely a medical tech company offering access to a digital platform presenting “solutions for a better care of women” with customised advice and programmes provided by a network of experts. The idea for the start-up is to pragmatically contribute to “the professional balance of women still too little supported in the world of companies and often forced to organise their care processes at the expense of their professional commitment”.

RH Matin, an information website dedicated to professionals in human resources in France, gives the voice to Fatoumata Ly, who “admits that companies have a hard time taking position on matters in relation with the private life of women and the intimacy of couples”. However, according to Fatoumata Ly, “we are experiencing a certain liberation of speech of women, and we feel some sort of slow gradual awareness about subjects such as the national strategy to fight endometriosis, a removal of deficiency about miscarriages and medically-assisted procreation process courses”.

A group for diversity in the digital industry

In parallel to the creation of this website, which puts listening, empathy and sharing as central values, Fatoumata Ly is also a member of the board of SISTA group, promoting “gender diversity in the digital industry”. This group aims at proving “diversity in the face of success”. through their actions, women in the group “tear down archaisms”, and with their presence encourage the newt women leaders and support women business founders “in access to fundings needed for the economic and social success of our country”.

The mission decided by SISTA is to “see digital economy led by a diverse group of leaders”. To this end, the group works at the time with entrepreneurs, investors and major players of the tech environment, with each stakeholder receiving “support to bridge the gap of funding between women and men”. Since 2019, SISTA has supported about a hundred entrepreneurs in their fund-raising actions!

Explore more

• on the French government’s information website:
• Ninti health website
• RH Matin website
• on the We are tech Africa website
• on the collectif SISTA website