Ivory Coast: Charlette N’Guessan, a tech-entrepreneur expert in facial recognition

Identity theft, financial fraud… in Africa, as everywhere else, cybersecurity remains a challenge, especially for companies. To help them, the young Ivorian Charlette N’Guessan decided to create the BACE API software, based on facial recognition. In September 2020, she received an award for her innovation.

Charlette N’guessan is a young entrepreneur passionate for technology. After a scientific path in high school, she was encouraged by her father to study electronics and computer networks. After her BTS in 2014, she obtained a degree in Computer Software Engineering in 2017 and decided to start her career as a tech entrepreneur. At the same time, she was selected to follow a training in coding and entrepreneurship at the prestigious Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) incubator in Accra. 

It was during her training in Ghana that she joined forces with other engineers to create BACE API software. Developed over many years, this technology in Africa has revealed an error rate five to ten times higher than in other continents. To create the software that adapts facial recognition to Africa, they decided to build a sample of faces from sub-Saharan Africa to ensure that it  will match the physical characteristics of Africans.  

Initially launched in Ghana in September 2018, the software is commercialized in the African market. It offers financial institutions a system that allows them to verify the identity of customers remotely through live photos and to verify that it is a person and not a robot. This solution could protect African economies from cybercrimes valued at 3.5 billion dollars in 2017.

In 2020, this innovative solution enabled the start-up BACE Group to win the African Engineering Innovation Award from the Royal Academy of Engineering of Africa in the amount of approximately €27,700. The same year, she also co-authored the Artificial Intelligence Book published by Wiley.

Evolving in a still predominantly male environment, Charlette N’Guessan now aims to get involved in inspiring young African girls to follow technological courses and careers in this field.