Entrepreneurs with an impact – 2020 batch
The AFIDBA
2020 Laureates
Amaati contributes to curbing the effects of desertification through the cultivation of Fonio (Fonio seeds can germinate on arid soils). From a social standpoint, Amaati participates in the integration of rural women, by giving them access to training. It also helps generate higher income. The venture thus offers them a way out of poverty and gender inequality.
• 2014: creation
• 4,000: acres of land under positive land management
• 2,500: vulnerable women farmers with access to land
Trisolace recycles used tires into snail farming boxes and supplies them to the vulnerable populations it has previously trained. Snails are nutritious, reproduce very easily, do not smell nor make noise and feed on the household’s organic waste. This initiative is a response to the country's food insecurity and empowers the country's vulnerable, often rural, populations.
• 2015: creation
• 400: boxes sold
• 339: used tyres recycled to make boxes
Ponaa Briquettes recycles organic waste into environmentally friendly briquettes used for cooking heating purpose. These briquettes do not produce smoke. They are 37% cheaper than charcoal (responsible for significant deforestation in the country). By replacing 90% of the country's charcoal, the firm intends to save 47,000 hectares of forest per year and reduce the emission of 2,700 tons of CO² per year. Finally, Ponaa Briquettes is committed to the employment and training of women to produce the briquettes and supply the raw material, which is organic waste.
• 2014: creation
• 500: rural families directly impacted
• 10,000: briquettes manufactured per year
Giddins Innove promotes local fashion, craftsmanship and “0-waste” through recycling (treatment of a waste product for reuse) and upcycling (detour of a waste product into a new object). In particular, Giddins recycles used conveyor belts from industry and makes shoe soles out of them. The solution integrates craftsmen and school dropouts into the market and pays them a fair price. Finally, it is a bulwark against the decline in market profitability due to the import of foreign brands.
• 2014: creation
• 3: global retailers
• 50: direct and indirect jobs created
Traila Technologies offers a solution based on Data Analysis and IoT for truck transportation. It helps optimize the transport of goods, reduces empty shipment costs (currently borne by all actors in the value chain including the consumer) and enhances truck drivers’ salaries. Finally, this solution reduces the “useless” CO² emissions on the territory.
• 2018: creation
• 15%: increase in gross revenue for transporters
• 20+: trucks
Taag has developed a networking and training platform, with an ambition to curb the massive youth unemployment linked to the lack of employability support. The platform brings together the key players in the employment market: schools, mentors, companies and job-seeking students. Taag grants more than 1,000 young people access to the skills needed to enter the job market.
• 2017: creation
• 1,200: active users
• 3: customer schools
Kitambaa advocates for keeping young girls in school and the emancipation of women: this includes the production of washable sanitary pads that it makes available free of charge. In fact, many girls drop out of school at the time of their first menstruation because of the taboos that exist on this subject: Kitambaa therefore enables their better integration in society.
• 2019: creation
• 5,000: kits sold by late 2020
• 150: young women trained to make sanitary pads by 2021
The domestic labour market in Senegal remains mainly informal, with precarious jobs involving women. Calinou'nou aims at formalizing and professionalising this industry. This recruitment and placement agency improves the working and living conditions of its staff, thanks in particular to an employment contract, as well as their skills through training in the sector’s professions. Calinou’nou hence tackles the issue of a precarious and disorganised domestic work sector.
• 2017: creation
• 148: employees working
• 94: customer households
Dinafof Biz is a training academy in road safety and eco-driving (smoother and environmentally responsible driving mode) for companies and organizations that own a fleet of vehicles and professional drivers. The venture’s goal is to reduce the rate of road fatalities and cases of negligence. It therefore trains drivers with an ambition to improve their employability on the market. Thus, it contributes in the long term to the reduction of the number of road accidents in Senegal.
• 2018: creation
• 325: drivers trained in 2019
• 3: countries covered
E-Cover first prototyped a system to recycle used tires. Since then, it has been diversifying its production to develop floor coverings and shoe soles from the granules recovered from tires. It thus revalorizes products and aims to solve the issues of pollution and insalubrity created by tire waste and to give better accessibility to products derived from tire recycling. E-Cover therefore allows for better waste management in the country, while offering affordable products to individuals, companies but also public authorities.
• 2015: creation
• 25: jobs created
• 55,000: tyres recycled
Malaika's garden is an educational complex adapted for underprivileged or disabled children. The school provides access to quality education for low-income families, enables mothers to reconcile family and professional activities while having their children educated, and employs 35 women to run the schools.
• 2015: creation
• 2,000: benefiting families
• 12: disabled children schooled
In Burkina Faso, accessing drinking water remains a crucial challenge: local communities do not have solutions to protect themselves from water-borne diseases. Bilada provides disinfectants to purify water and make it drinkable at home. This reduces the rate of infection and empowers households to autonomously purify “their” water.
• 2017: creation
• 2,640: rural households that have sanitized water
• 2,000: liters of sanitized water with a 500mL can of chlorinated solution
In rural areas, women struggle to find work opportunities that guarantee a stable income. Faso Attiéké intends to empower women through manioc semolina production while working towards food security. It trains hundreds of women manioc processors, increases their incomes and develops organic production on 25 hectares in Burkina Faso.
• 2015: creation
• 210: female manioc collectors in 3 countries
• 52: long-term employment
In Burkina Faso, women do not always find educational or work opportunities to ensure a stable income. Ragussi is remedying this situation through its women's cooperative producing cosmetics based on organic shea butter. The cooperative contributes to the reinforcement of the employees' capacities by providing them with technical, economic and social support.
• 2019: creation
• 1,471: vulnerable women accompanied
• 60: tons of organic shea butter sold each year
80% of the Burkinabe population is employed in the agriculture industry. Smallholders face difficulties in the market: soil degradation, difficulties in finding quality inputs, scarce access to credit. Green Hope offers a digital solution to optimize farmers' production. The solution helps quantify their needs for inputs, obtain credit and increase their income and thus stands as a way out of poverty.
• 2015: creation
• +52%: increase in farming income
• 57M: CFA Francs of financial credits granted
Today, scrap dealers in the outskirts of large cities collect quality spare parts that they sell at low prices without referencing and qualification. As for car customers, they want to reduce the cost of repairing their vehicles. O'Kasio meets the difficulty car-owners face when looking for adequate, quality replacement parts to repair their vehicles thanks to its marketplace. It makes it possible to buy quality spare parts supplied by scrap dealers and have them delivered to your home or to your sheet metal shop. It improves the customer experience for car-owners while enhancing working conditions for scrap dealers by giving them access to new markets.
• 2018: creation
• 125: scrap merchants interviewed
• 45 : scrap merchants using the platform
Antoine de MIRBECK
Peecoop is a mobile application for urban freight transport. It allows individuals and companies to quickly geolocate a commercial vehicle owner (a peecooper) for the delivery of goods throughout the city of Casablanca. Peecoop's ambition is on one hand technological since it intends to ensure deliveries "immediately, without delay" and with the possibility to geolocate the package at any time. On the other hand, it is inclusive as it allows peecoopers to move from the informal to the formal sector and guarantees them social protection and training.
• 2020: creation
• 150: utility vehicles referenced
• 71: Peecoopers with self-employed status
We Berber is an e-commerce platform for handmade Moroccan wool carpets. They are designed by women from Berber tribes in the region of Khemisset and the platform responds to their inability to market these creations on a large scale. We Berber is committed to fair trade and supports the communities of weavers by participating in their socio-economic integration.
• 2017: creation
• 3: women weavers employed who produce 2 medium size carpets per month
• 50: additional dirhams earned per day by the weavers
Moroccan SMEs and auto-entrepreneurs face cash flow difficulties, often accentuated by long payment delays from their corporate customers. Rifso contributes to meeting these challenges by offering SMEs an innovative financing solution to reduce the risks associated with payment delays. This solution is fully digital and allows an advance on customer invoices (B to B) within 24 hours and the receipt of this advance within 72 hours. In this way, Rifso contributes to reducing the precariousness of small businesses in the Kingdom.
• 2017: creation
• 3: key account partners & microfinance institutions
• 24: hours needed to study the demand
