APSIP Yours!

In late August, Dave and I applied to be official volunteer coaches for APSIP, a 12 day workshop for University of Ouagadougou students interested in entrepreneurship. The participants were split into 6 groups of 5 – 7 people and asked to develop a business plan for an entrepreneurial idea. To help them, the workshop featured lectures on topics ranging from basic accounting to marketing to tax aspects. At the end of the 2 weeks, the students presented their elevator pitch to a jury panel. The group with the most highly rated business plan won certificates (for some reason, certificates are a really big deal here). In previous years, the winning group also received seed money to launch their idea, but unfortunately this year funding wasn’t available.

The US Embassy sponsors this workshop and normally participates, but given the Embassy’s transitional period they didn’t provide a physical presence this year. The Peace Corps felt strongly enough about this workshop that they provided lodging and per diem for 4 small enterprise development volunteers to help direct the workshop. Matthew and Chris, MBA, helped out the first week and Dave and I took over for the second week.

The workshop was comprised of communications (lectures) and small group work during which Dave and I would roam from group to group to provide individualized coaching. The APSIP participants were university-educated and spoke French with a sophistication rarely encountered in the province, which forced us to modify our approach and perspective. (At site, the populations I work with most frequently are illiterate women or high school students.) Dave and I also delivered our own communications; he presented on the topics of product life cycle and commercialization of new products while I discussed marketing and branding.

Saturday was the day of reckoning, the day that the students presented their elevator pitches to the jury panel. I served on the 3 member jury and voted on the proposals. Each idea was scored on a scale of 1-5 with multipliers for each category (innovation, feasibility, marketability and presentation). The groups presented and prepared complete business plans for the following ideas:

1. An industrialized version of Soumbala (locust bean), a dried grain used to replace bouillon cubes in cooking. Normally produced artisanally (i.e., by hand), the group wanted to produce soumbala on a large scale and in different formats, such as powder and liquid. Currently soumbala is sold in balls of clumped beans by independent producers.

2. Modernized pork husbandry. Pork is also normally raised artisanally (i.e., small-scale animal raisers keeping a few pigs at a time). This group wanted to build a warehouse for a large quantity of pigs and synchronize the breeding so that there would be a continuous stream of supply of pigs for slaughter. Although a majority of Burkinabé are Muslim, there’s a significant Christian population, and these people eat pork like its going out of style. The group argued that the current supply of pork is unreliable and insufficient.

3. Modernized chicken husbandry. This group wanted to combine different “races” of chickens to create a super breed that was more resistant to disease and better tasting too. They planned to target hotels and restaurants as primary consumers. I wasn’t sure what kinds of chicken were superior to others, but I docked points for potential racism.

4. Onion preservation. Because onions become scarce at certain times of the year, this group wanted to dry and preserve onions in order to provide the market with a continuous year-long supply. They also planned to gain customers by offering lower-priced onions during the scarce periods, when prices are normally elevated.

5. Bissap tea bags. Bissap is a tea brewed from red flowers that is consumed regularly as a snack but in large quantities during holidays and festivals. Normally one purchases the dried flowers and brews them at home. This group wanted to process the bissap into tea sachets for single-serving brews. Their biggest obstacle would be convincing customers that the ready-to-serve bissap would be more desirable than purchasing soda pop.

6. Moringa vitamin supplements. Moringa is a tree that thrives even in the harshest climates whose leaves are rich in nutrients and vitamins. This group wanted to harvest, dry and create power from the leaves and then package it into a pill as a vitamin supplement. This group planned to commercialize their product with parents and nurses.

Who would you have voted for?

The winner was…

….Wait for it…..

….ORAMO! (The name of the Moringa product, which was an amalgam of orale and moringa)

I was highly impressed with the caliber of ideas and the motivation of the students. Their dynamism and entrepreneurial spirit gives me hope for Burkina Faso’s economic future. All too often, people in developing countries reach the highest echelons of education only to emigrate to a developed country. While life may be more comfortable for them abroad, they have so much more to contribute to their home countries. Progress happens slowly and the pace can be frustrating, but it won’t happen at all if the brain drain continues. It made me happy to see the Burkinabé university students analyzing the local market and trying to innovate within cultural bounds. An emphasis on education helped many previously developing countries become economic powerhouses, but it only works when that knowledge is not exported out.