Hafou Touré Samb, a businesswoman committed to financing African SMEs

Hafou Touré-Samb is an Ivorian businesswoman and entrepreneur, the founder and CEO of HTS Partners, a consulting firm that supports SMEs in Africa in obtaining financing, as well as in developing internationally.

After a brilliant career in the largest international financial institutions, including the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank, the African Development Bank and in the private sector, Hafou Touré-Samb is now dedicated to supporting African SMEs in accessing financing.

In 2019, she founded HTS Partners, a firm based in Abidjan, whose mission is to facilitate access to financing for SMEs. In 5 years, she has enabled several companies, SMEs, VSEs, to obtain financing, thanks to partnerships with multilateral development banks, notably the AfDB and the IFC. The firm focuses particularly on women-owned businesses in order to reduce the financing gap for women, through the Emerging Women Leaders Conference. Committed to the empowerment of women, she founded the NGO Global Sharing Program, which supports women entrepreneurs and disadvantaged children worldwide.

Since 2021, she has been working with the Ivorian government, notably as Deputy Director of the Cabinet of the Ministry for the Promotion of SMEs, Crafts and Transformation of the Informal Sector. Her work focuses on policies to improve the conditions of SMEs in Côte d’Ivoire.

She graduated in 2018 with a Master of Public Administration from Harvard Kennedy School and an MBA from Wharton University of Pennsylvania in 2017, as well as a double Bachelor of Science in Applied Mathematics and Business Administration from Stony Brook University in New York. In 2012, she began her professional career as a credit assessment analyst at Moody’s, then at UBS Investment Banking. In 2014, she became a consultant at Deloitte Advisory where she designed and carried out assessments and operational processes for large financial institutions. She then worked as a consultant in investment and SME development for the World Bank, IFC Asset Management and the African Development Bank. Among her accomplishments, she initiated the establishment of a banking investment fund for agricultural SMEs.

In 2021, she was selected among 3,000 candidates to represent Côte d’Ivoire as a leader of the French-African Foundation. In 2022, she received the title of Knight of the National Order of Côte d’Ivoire.