Diagnostic and Design Workshops to Focus on the Establishment of Vegetable Business Networks in Burkina Faso

The Research and Action Group for Development has just identified 25 champions, which will revolve around as many networks of market gardening enterprises to be set up in different regions of this vast country, Burkina Faso. The Diagnostic and Design workshop in Ouagadougou, which opened on 24 April 2023, is dedicated to setting up the REMs that will operate in this important agglomeration where the demand for healthy, locally produced vegetables is immense.

The Ouagadougou Diagnostic and Design workshop was in a large meeting room with internal and external coaches, representatives of identified champions and input suppliers. This is the first of six workshops scheduled to be held this year in Burkina Faso.

After the usual introductions, valuable explanations were given in Moore (the main language spoken in the country) to better set the scene for this meeting and especially reassure participants who seemed to be wondering what would happen.  As a prelude, the participants were given a PowerPoint presentation of the Research and Action Group for Development and another of the SAFEVEG project with the projection of a planisphere to allow everyone to locate the European Union and the Kingdom of the Netherlands geographically. The ins and outs of Vegetable Business Networks and the need to structure themselves in clusters have also been explained at length. The workshop could start in its didactic phase. Discussions in the form of questions and answers revolved around the functioning of the REMs, the role of internal and external coaches, the provision of quality seeds, marketing, access to decentralized financial services and the need to renew the outdated working tools of some aggregators.

Overall, the Diagnostic and Design workshop in Ouagadougou allowed the actors present to get to know each other physically and, above all, to take measures of the issues and challenges at stake.  After this frank success, the networks of market garden enterprises in Ouagadougou and its suburbs can now be considered installed and functional.