La Laiterie du Berger and Kossam receive USD 5M from the Mastercard Foundation
©Philippe Lissac
The Mastercard Foundation has just awarded Kossam a USD 5 million grant for the period 2019-2022 to enable Kossam and Laiterie du Berger to create 5,000 direct or indirect jobs in the Richard Toll region.
La Laiterie du Berger, the strength of African entrepreneurship
La Laiterie du Berger is an example of the power of entrepreneurship in Africa. The social enterprise was created in 2006 by Bagoré Bathily and a group of active shareholders, with the goal of promoting local dairy production. "90% of the milk consumed in Senegal is imported in powder form, while 30% of the population traditionally lives from livestock farming and can produce milk. This observation led to the creation of Laiterie du Berger," Bagoré Bathily tells us.
The dairy collects milk from Fulani herders in the Richard Toll area of northern Senegal to then produce dairy products using local, natural milk. The company works with 800 Fulani herders, employs 300 people, and produces 6,000 tons of yogurt each year. After 12 years of existence, with the support of the Grameen Crédit Agricole Foundation and Crédit Agricole Franche-Comté, a second chapter has opened with the creation of a new subsidiary, Kossam SDE.
Kossam aims to structure the dairy sector in northern Senegal by promoting access to material resources for dairy production, providing training to farmers, and developing an innovative model of pilot "mini-farms." "More than 600 farming families have been impacted by the development of the local dairy sector, seeing their income increase by more than 50% between 2018 and 2019," says Jonathan Michaud, Director of Kossam, an agricultural engineer from Crédit Agricole Franche-Comté, who, after a "Solidarity Bankers" skills volunteer mission in 2018, left for two years to lead the project.
An unprecedented change of scale for the company
A new phase is about to begin for Laiterie du Berger and Kossam. Won over by Laiterie du Berger's social enterprise model, the Mastercard Foundation has just allocated a USD 5 million grant to Kossam for the period 2019-2022. The objective of this grant is to enable Kossam and Laiterie du Berger to create 5,000 direct or indirect jobs in the area. The allocated amount will be used, in particular, to increase milk collection to 4,000 tons and to promote the restructuring of the collection system. This financial support is particularly targeted at women, who are traditionally responsible for milk production and collection in Senegal.
This new project is called MéLiTeJi, the letters (M, L, T, J), which symbolically represent in Wolof milk (Meew), employment (Ligueey), success (Tekki) and women (Djiguen). This funding reinforces the company's objectives of developing livestock farming in a sustainable, responsible and social perspective and of building a sustainable Senegalese dairy sector, established on the basis of a modern and job-generating economy.
This grant is in itself a tremendous success that demonstrates the strength of this social enterprise model and the confidence in its potential for structuring the sector and creating jobs.
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