The harmful and negative effects of the world financial crisis are still perceptible in Africa. While already, it could not hold the competition arisen from the globalization; our continent seemed to be condemned to hold out the hand to base its economic and social development.

Today, the time came for this Africa to answer all the challenges with the birth and the existence of the African Organization of Competitive intelligence (AOCI) which, henceforth, is going to contribute to the improvement of the competitiveness as well of her) companies as the savings of its various countries, by way of the good governance.

AOCI is fruit of a reflection begun in 2000 by Joseph BAYEHE, consultant, and graduate school lecturer. Just after the United Nations summit on the Objectives of the millennium for the development (OMD) It was then a question of supporting the African actors in their efforts of integration and development, reduction of the poverty. And later, make Africa a major actor of the globalization.

Joining, from 2004, other African intellectuals into this study and into this Joseph BAYEHE's analysis, which allowed moreover to draw up the despicable situation of Africa in front of challenges of time new, the idea went on in his own way to take into account the geopolitical context and international geo-economic marked by the effects of the globalization in particular, competition and the economic war.

The African intellectuals will so concern baptismal fonts, in December, 2004, in Dakar in Senegal, the African Organization of competitive intelligence (AOCI) for, henceforth, to protect itself risks connected to the globalization and to remain competitive while insuring the world leadership, by the control of the information consecutive to the new economy. These intellectuals were convinced that Africa needed to catch up its delay taken in the implementation of the concept of competitive intelligence which missed in its "bag". A concept with competitiveness, sovereignty and economic security challenges.

The objectives of the organization are:

• To promote the competitive intelligence and its practices in Africa. 
• To support the competitiveness of the African economies and to inform the economic operators on the trade and competitiveness issues.
• To allow a progress and a continuous development for the achievement of the national objectives of economic performances and good governance in the African countries, 
• To support durable progress, on the long term, towards the establishment of effective good governance, constant growth and an efficient anticipation facilitating by information control and strategic thinking
• To improve the diffusion and the use of economic information in the African countries, in particular by creating and organizing data banks accessible to the various economic agents. 
• To advise governments on the conception and the implementation of a policy concerning competitive intelligence and trade policies. 
• Facilitating in the decentralized territorial communities, the use of the competitive intelligence in the management of the territories and the management of the local development.
• To cause, collect, store and disseminate information and results of research.

To reach these objectives, a strategic plan on 2009 - 2013, which supplies a frame of the activities of the organization during the next 5 years, was adopted. This plan which articulates around several points bases itself on the series of strategic objectives of the AOCI; themselves shape to the objectives, missions and the organization chart of the AOCI. They reveal a subtle understanding of the way the transformations and the economic changes take place in a more and more global world. The strategic objectives are also turned to the priority domains of the NEPAD and to the preoccupations of the African countries and especially to the requirements of the financiers and the bodies of the economic cooperation and development. 

These proposed strategic objectives were also formulated by basing itself on needs expressed by the African governments in the Documents of strategy of reduction of the poverty (DSRP) and in the diverse reports and on the needs of States in the domains of the economic, regulations and institutional reform. Besides, the AOCI strictly took into account its comparative advantage with regard to the other actors contributing actively to the questions of economic development and good governance in the African countries.

This strategic plan makes it a point of honour to the outside environment to allow in Africa to reach vaster objectives of development. Quite as it also puts a particular accent on the emergent needs; because very few studies exist in Africa on the possibilities of economic future.
The global objective pursued by the AOCI thus wants " a means to progress towards the achievement of the objectives of development and struggle against poverty in the African countries ". What brings the organization, in the first place, to play a role authorizing rather than directive or normative; Secondly, to act according to the notion of national property of the strategies of development; and thirdly, as international organization, to have an important role to be played to help to catalyse the schedules of reform.

That is why our organization puts a particular accent on the importance that take on, on one hand, the implementation of partnerships between the world and African communities, and the other one the presentation of Africa to the world as a key objective for the AOCI. Because, in the heart of the strategy of the African Organization of the economic intelligence, is an economic growth based on solid, widened and shared bases.

We are convinced that with this new instrument that is the AOCI, no more financial crisis as the one that the world has just crossed, and of which the fatal consequences always are smelt on our even more fragile African savings, can never surprise us. Because we believe firmly today that the economic, better mastered information, is an essential factor to hold the new challenges of the time which offer themselves in Africa.

Orlien Claude Atto NTAKPE

Président