Income Generating Activities

At the beginning of training back in October, the SED PCT’s were split into three groups and charged with the task of creating an income generating activity (IGA) and partnering with a Burkinabé entrepreneur to bring it to market. The criteria stated that it had to appeal to a Burkinabé market, not involve alcohol and be sustainable. Once we came up with the product idea, each group had to locate an entrepreneur, design the production process, assist with the marketing and promotion and then report on our results. We presented the results this past Saturday.

Dave’s group came up with iced coffee in a sachet. Most of the customers ended up being American, but there were a few Burkinabé customers who ended up becoming believers! Their venture was by far the most profitable… and tasty!!

My group worked with my host mother, who owns a hair salon, and came up with the idea to sell single-use servings of hair gel in sachets. Burkinabé are dissimilar to Americans in that time is not money and they don’t like to store their wealth in stockpiling products. For example, for a Burkinabé it makes more sense to make weekly trips to a boutique to buy single-use packets of Omo (laundry detergent) than to buy a month’s supply all at once. The weekly trips are not inconvenient since time is not particularly valuable. Therefore, there is no convenience in buying a month’s supply of laundry detergent all at once; if anything, it would constrain an inordinate amount of money for which there is no trade-off. My group transferred this philosophy to hair gel, a radical new concept. We purchased a 500g container of hair gel and spooned single-use servings into small sachets; we produced 33 sachets at a cost of approximately CFA 33 per sachet ($0.07) and priced each sachet at CFA 50 ($0.10), producing a nice, fat profit margin of approximately 50%. We thought CFA 50 might be a steep price, but we hoped that people would see the value in spending CFA 50 on a single-use serving rather than buying an actual container of gel from the store, the smallest of which goes for CFA 500 ($1.00). We prepared the sachets and with my host mother’s blessing, put up a crude sign in her salon advertising the product. Three weeks later, she has sold nearly half the lot, 16 sachets! I was very proud of the progress, since all customers were actual Burkinabé and because my host mother said she wanted to continue producing the product after the first batch sells out. WAX ON, WAX OFF!!