A friendly meeting between the first "PACT Afrique" promotions

On Wednesday  October 7^th, the 22 African students from the first three "PACT Afrique" classes, all admitted to the MiM Grande Ecole Program at HEC Paris, met on campus with Bertrand Schwab, Major Donor of the Equal Opportunities Program for Africa.

Thanks to the generosity of the HEC Foundation’s donors, the "PACT Afrique" project is growing and today it covers three countries: Gabon, Cameroon and Côte d'Ivoire. For the past three years, this programme has been supporting young African talents to prepare them for the international admission competition’s written and oral exams so that they may access  HEC Paris “Grande Ecole”. The program provides them with the needful means to better understand the tests and build their self-confidence:  students are pre-selected based on their academic results and motivation.

To date, more than 120 students have benefited from this unique support program and 22 of them have been admitted to HEC Paris.

This project was made possible thanks to the support of the HEC Foundation and the commitment of donors graduated from the School. Bertrand Schwab (H.87), Major Donor of the HEC Foundation, was the first donor to support this program through the creation of "The Isabelle and Bertrand Schwab Social Initiative Fund". For this reason it was important for the School, the HEC Foundation and the program's recipients, who are now students at HEC, to organize a meeting in his presence.

On this purpose, in early October, 22 students of the 3 classes gathered for lunch to meet Bertrand Schwab and Christian Kamayou (M.00) who has been driving the program's launch in Cameroon.

After this friendly sharing a “PACT community” was born within HEC. This community is already feeding an active network and building a bridge between Europe and Africa. "I thought I was coming to France", says one of the Ivorian students, "but it was the whole world that I and my classmates have met on the HEC campus!”

I was very impressed by the motivation, the ambition, the positive energy of all these young students. I think this group also has a lot to offer to other students on campus.

Bertrand Schwab

One of the objectives of HEC Paris is to significantly increase the recruitment of African talents to have them graduated in its programs. The "PACT Afrique"program contributes to achieve this goal and fight against the students’ self-censorship as they do not "dare" to apply due to their economic and financial obstacles.

If you wish to support the HEC Foundation’s equal opportunities projects, feel free to contact us by email or make a on-line donation in our platform HERE.