From Limited Resources to Limitless Potential: A Burkina Faso Women’s Cooperative’s Journey
In 2022, 25 women entrepreneurs from Kaya — a commune in Burkina Faso’s Centre Nord region — established the Songdbwoaga Cooperative, a local community savings group to improve their collective ability to save and grow their businesses. The women saved US $166 in membership dues, which allowed them to begin producing and selling peanut-based products such as cakes, oils, and pastes.
But $166 was not enough capital for the Cooperative to stockpile critical raw materials (such as peanuts) needed to run their businesses successfully. The lack of reliable product supply and vulnerability to a fluctuating raw materials market — exacerbated by food insecurity, inflation, and ongoing conflict in the region — forced many of the women in the savings group to halt business operations.
Since 2020, the USAID CATALYZE Finance for Resilience (F4R) Activity has used a blended finance approach to expand access to credit for agricultural sector entrepreneurs and micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) who have been disproportionately impacted by conflict — particularly women and youth — across Burkina Faso and Niger. Through partnership agreements with financial institutions (commercial banks and microfinance institutions) and financial facilitators (financial professionals who connect MSMEs with financial institutions to secure financing), F4R helps MSMEs access the credit needed to power and sustain their businesses. This approach reduces the credit gap faced by local agricultural sector actors and allows them to increase their yields and/or sales, which strengthens local food systems and contributes to a more reliable food supply for communities.
In March 2023, the Songdbwoaga Cooperative connected with Aminata Semde, a financial facilitator who has partnered with CATALYZE F4R since October 2021. Through her partnership with F4R, Semde helped the Songdbwoaga Cooperative access a $9,260 loan from Communauté Epargne et Crédit.
The loan helped the Cooperative’s members to stockpile raw materials, which facilitated a more continuous production and eventually tripled their output. The additional financial flexibility allowed the group to explore — and successfully market — a new product (peanut cake sweetened with milk).
Moreover, the Cooperative has expanded their operations to parboiling and selling paddy rice, which has production capacity of approximately 50 tons of rice per year in Burkina Faso.
Thanks to the support of CATALYZE F4R, the Songdbwoaga Cooperative members have not only been able to pay their original loan in full but are now generating an average monthly profit of $868. According to Songdbwoaga Cooperative President Aminata Sawadogo, several members have been able to increase their individual contributions to household expenses as a result of their businesses’ increased growth, which has contributed to improving food security for their families.
As of June 2024, CATALYZE F4R has mobilized $3,153,931 in private capital benefiting 175 MSMEs (38 percent of which are women-owned or -led) across Burkina Faso. By empowering women-owned MSMEs with improved access to finance, CATALYZE F4R is shaping innovative partnerships that stimulate local business growth while making sustainable contributions toward the transformation of Burkina Faso’s food systems. Read more stories of impact here.
