The unemployment rate in the suburbs is more than twice the national average – 18% of the working population compared to 7.1% – not enough to discourage Franco-Moroccan entrepreneur Aziz Senni. “We always hear about the cost of the suburbs, never about what they bring in,” he asserts.
To change mentalities, the president of the Quartiers d’affaires association has chosen to strike hard. He has imagined a major event that would follow the model of the Davos summit, the most famous global economic fair held each year in the Swiss city. An event where the former Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, and the former head of Medef, Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux, are announced.
And so that this meeting is not just brain juice, Aziz Senni hopes to bring together 100 million euros in public and private orders for companies located in the neighborhoods.
Relaunching the social elevator
If, at 48, this original investor is widely recognized in his profession, the path was far from easy. He was born and raised in the city of Val Fourré, in Mantes-la-Jolie (Yvelines). In high school, one of his uninspired teachers left him this assessment: “Aziz is not cut out for economics.” The anecdote still makes him laugh today.
Creation of a real estate investment company, political commitment with François Bayrou, then Jean-Louis Borloo, association support… The forty-year-old has a rich and diverse career. Deeply marked by the social inequalities he witnessed during his childhood, he decided very early to invest to ensure financial security.
“Aziz is a class defector. He dares, doesn’t succeed at everything, but gets back up,” emphasizes the journalist Jean-Marc Pitte, with whom he co-wrote The social elevator is broken (2005) and The Social Elevator Is Still Broken (2015). Its various activities are geared towards a single objective: improving the face of cities.
Aziz Senni is sure that this impetus must come through the economic development of these neighborhoods where the poverty rate reaches 42% of the population. “The suburbs represent 250,000 businesses and 75 billion euros in turnover,” he insists. “Each government has considered these territories from a security, social and urban perspective. It is time to do it from an economic perspective.”
