Yeesal Agri Hub (Senegal)
Yeesal Agri Hub is the first Hub in West Africa, specialised in agribusiness, agritech and green economy. The organisation was created in 2016 by a group of agripreneurs, farmers, researchers, and students. A physical space was created for peer learning, sharing, and stimulating the creation of innovative projects in rural areas. By emphasising the concept of empathy, Yeesal Agri Hub team’s provided pre-incubation, incubation and acceleration programmes for young people and women in agribusiness, agritech and green economy. The Hub also contributes to a model of youth integration and self-employment in these sectors.
In 2022/2023, the Eurofins Foundation is supporting the programme Agriprenor In Action II, a 10-month support programme with the main objective of offering technical assistance and investment readiness training to 30 agricultural entrepreneurs based in the regions of Thies, Kolda, Ziguinchor and Dakar, in Senegal, focusing on women, undergraduates, and migrants.
In Senegal, more than 100,000 new graduates join the labour market each year for only a 31% successful placement rate. This means 60% of young Senegalese end up unemployed. This estimate does not consider young Senegalese who have not had access to traditional educational channels and those who have dropped out of school.
Awa MBENGUE is the founder of AwA Bio Foods and she says “Yeesal AgriHub was our first incubator. As a result of the Agripreneur in Action II program, we were able to obtain our first financing, which opened other doors for us. With this money, we bought freezers to increase our storage capacity by a factor of 5. The funds also enabled us to purchase raw materials, obtain our organic certificate and the “Fra” marketing authorisation for 11 products. AwA Bio Foods has improved significantly in terms of brand image, working methods and financial management.”
This project contributes to the following United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
