Fez — The entrepreneurial TV competition “Les Nouveaux Boss” is making a stop in Morocco for its second episode, with a full day of auditions set to take place on December 12 at the Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (UM6P) campus in Benguerir.
Ten entrepreneurs from Morocco, Tunisia, and the Central African Republic will pitch projects ranging from agro-innovation to digital culture, design, and tech.
Morocco hosts the second selection round
After a first episode in Côte d’Ivoire, “Les Nouveaux Boss” is using Benguerir as its next stage, highlighting what the production describes as a “city of innovation” where thousands of students learn and work with equipment built to international standards.
Each of the ten candidates will try to convince a panel of experts that their project deserves to move forward in the competition. The most convincing profiles will receive a Silver Pass, before the jury meets at the end of the day to award four Golden Passes. Those Golden Passes serve as official invitations to join La Station, the entrepreneurial residency where selected founders will be supported as they develop their ventures.
A Moroccan expert trio on the jury
For this Moroccan episode, the show is guided by a trio rooted in the local ecosystem. Yassine Laghzioui, mentor for the episode, leads UM6P Ventures, the university’s investment and support fund dedicated to startups. A specialist in African deeptech, he works with founders across the continent on breakthrough technologies.
He is joined by Dounia Boumehdi, managing director of MNF Ventures (Maroc Numeric Fund I & II), one of Morocco’s main tech investment references. With more than 20 years of experience in private equity, she focuses on growing innovative companies and backing strong female leadership in the digital sector. The third expert, Ismaël Belkhayat, is a successful entrepreneur and co-founder of Chari Group. Known as one of the key faces of Morocco’s digital transformation, he brings hands-on insight from e-commerce and broader tech initiatives.
An African competition with global reach
“Les Nouveaux Boss” is an original creation by TV5MONDE and WeMake Productions and is presented as the first TV competition to give African entrepreneurs global visibility. Across eight prime-time episodes broadcast in more than 200 countries and territories, 16 candidates will receive mentoring from high-level experts, refine their projects, and aim for the Grand Finale, where they will pitch to an international investor jury.
The selection journey does not stop in Benguerir. Upcoming episodes will continue in Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and in Cotonou, Benin, for the third and fourth stages of the contest. The program airs every Friday at 9 p.m. in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Monaco, Africa (Dakar time), and the Maghreb–Middle East zone (Rabat time), and every Saturday in Europe, Asia, the Pacific, the United States, and Latin America, with all episodes also available on the free streaming platform TV5MONDE+.
Partners backing a continental platform
The production has already been welcomed in Côte d’Ivoire by Sublime Côte d’Ivoire, which provided extensive resources for the shoot. The show is made in partnership with UM6P as scientific partner, Orange as telecom partner, Ecobank as banking partner, Visa as financial partner, and Air France for mobility. It is also supported by the Alliance des Patronats Francophones, Bpifrance, and the French-African Foundation.
With episode two, Morocco becomes one of the key stops on a route designed to showcase African founders to a worldwide audience, and to link university campuses like Benguerir’s UM6P with a broader story about innovation on the continent.
