Visit to Imalaah

Yesterday, the Wow team visited Imalaah, a specialized massage centre situated on the Avenue Bourguiba, near from Wow office.
This centre that is applying for 5 000 000FCFA (10 000$) to extend its premises is managed by Avelina, who is very skilled and have more than twenty years experience. With a good knowledge of african traditional techniques of healing and massage, the centre proposes three different kinds of activity:
1) Training:
- Two years training in massage designed for girls. And by the end a diploma will give official recognition to the training.
- Intensive training designed for professionals like physical therapists, nurses etc to improve the quality of their intervention.
2) Massage: This activity is presently the most important in terms of incomes.
3) Production and sales of natural’s products made from butter shea, karate, sesame oil and aloévéra. Most of its production is exported.
After describing her activities, Avelina made us known the situation of the business and the purpose of the financing she is asking for.She said she would use it to extend offices so as to raise the welcome capacity.As far the working capital is concerned, she thinks she will be able to face it with the profits of produits sale.
And after a two hours meetings, we left, giving her a new appointment on Thursday for discuss the way to work out the business plan with her.
Amara

A rainy week at the office






We started off the week with a couple of to-do items for Linda.
We visited Sigil once again. This time to buy some sample bags to take back with me to the US. The idea is that Linda will then be able to show these to WOW advisors and get their input and feedback. He also showed us a new sample of a shopping bag that was reversible. He is still in the process of finishing it and choosing the right handles for it.



We also had further discussions on possible tags / logs that could be put on WOW clothing / bag merchandise. There are two options – to have them printed or to have them woven. The woven tags tend to look neater and could also include some interesting words. The logo attached here with the words ‘GROWING AFRICAN BUSINESSES’ was one our ideas. Currently, Sigil has his tags printed in Morocco. Perhaps it could make sense for us to have these made in the US.


During our conversation with Linda on Monday, we were able to further refine our thoughts on the immediate hiring needs for WOW. Ideally besides the new CEO, WOW needs a couple of more investment analyst / account managers, accountants and a legal consultant. We discussed these roles further with Malick and were able to write down job descriptions for these positions. Malick and Amara gave us the impression that while the skills required for these positions are extensive, it should not be too difficult to find appropriate candidates in Dakar.

Wow currently has 8 companies in its portfolio, most of which have further funding needs. Further, we have been analyzing another 7 companies. The total funding required for 2008 for these 15 companies is of the order of 200m CFA (circa $500,000). We have summarized the financial needs of these 15 companies and will present these to Linda. If we wish to fund 20 portfolio companies, during 2008-2009, WOW should raise close to $750,000. It is hard to predict what these businesses will need in years beyond 2009. What we do now is that some of these needs are fairly urgent so the investment in these companies needs to be appropriately timed for it to have maximum impact.

Ludo visited us in the office today with his design for the homepage. Christian and I went through every granular detail on the page to make it more attractive, appropriate, aligned with the WOW theme. He was very hands on and made the changes as we discussed. He will work on cleaning up the product further so it can be shown to a larger audience. It is still in its primitive stage, however we convinced him that we must show Linda the design so far (even though it is still very raw). I think working with a website designer based in Senegal is going to be challenging - especially if WOW intends to do this going forward from the US. Our meeting today was very, very hands on, and it is hard to imagine how this could take place across continents. The meeting today was exciting and it was great to be able to see a product transform as we gave more and more input.

Karishma

Friday at the office

We spent more time on Friday identifying good products for the fund raising activities.
We visited Sigil – a clothes and bag designing company. They make very trendy products using Denim and other fabrics. They showed us various samples of bags / purses at different price points that could be used for WOW fundraising. We could attach a nice WOW tag to these products. They will also help us deign a WOW tag for clothing, bags etc and will get back to us soon with a quote for the designing.



The founder of Enterprise Bracelet (Sini) paid us a visit at the office. She had samples of beautiful necklaces and very cute dolls with her – more products that we could use for fundraising. We asked if her products – necklaces, bracelets, dolls were replicable in larger quantities – and she assured us that it would be possible. Sini is extremely reliable, friendly and enthusiastic about working with us.



The lady from Benn Loxo also came into the office on Friday. Amara had a long discussion with her regarding the analysis that has been done. She maintained that the projections for revenues and costs in the analysis are accurate. She also re-iterated that a loan for her would not be sustainable unless WOW increased the term of the loan to 10 years or reduced interest rates and increased the grace period.
Today, we had a good discussion with Malick about staffing needs for the office – especially once the interns leave and he is the only person here besides the CEO. He expressed the urgent need for 1-2 more investment analysts – people to do work similar to what he has been doing. He hoped they would come equipped with knowledge of fashion, retail, food processing, value chain management – thus adding to the expertise of the WOW team. He envisions that these analysts would work at the office and also on the field with portfolio and potential companies. He also expressed the need for a full-time accountant for WOW who would also be responsible for liaising with the portfolio companies regarding their timely payments to WOW. Finally, he mentioned we needed a legal advisor for contract issues, though this could be done on a part-time basis. He hopes that an operating manual that documents each person’s role in the organization is created – perhaps one of the first few important tasks for the new CEO of WOW.
Karishma

Visit to Diourbel and Thiés

Today, we paid a visit to the women GIE based in Diourbel and Deendey couture to discuss products that WOW will probably neeed, particularly bracelets and bags. for that occasion, we invited Seni from Entreprise Bracelets because she was working in partnership with that GIE.
We left the office at 7o'clock am to attain Diourbel around 10o'clock.Once there we discussed the products we were asking for, they had exhited some samples of bracelets with many different designes and colours. At end of our discussion, they agreed to make us bracelets with a suitable design and according to the Wow main colours... we also asked to make some bracelets mixing these colours.
We left there at midday and called on Dendey couture. We got to thiès around 1o'clock p.m, finding Mouminou, the Dendey couture owner a bit ill. After salamecs, we explained her the reason for our visit. She made us certain she would be able to make bags according to our needs and wants.But unfortunately, she hadn't any sample of bay because it was not her main product. She promised to call us soon to give the right prices and costs related to the bags producing.
After taking lunch, we left there to attain at 6o'clock p.m. Seni ensured us she would to the office on friday bringing necklaces.
Amara

Feasibility Considerations

After a long and productive talk with Linda yesterday the team was busy at work today on two important tasks: a plan for the anticipated WOW Business Center and staffing considerations for the next 6 months. We were asked to steer our efforts to these areas after having encountered some difficulty performing a feasibility study for one WOW’s portfolio companies, Benn Loxo in the city of Joal.

Because we spent a fair amount of time preparing this feasibility study – and we believe these kind of studies should increasingly provide the foundation for WOW’s due diligence process – I thought I would touch on this a bit in this blog post. Benn Loxo is a women’s cooperative that processes a diversity of seafood products native to the Joal region. These include a variety of fish and shellfish that are dried, salted and smoked through artisanal methods. The waters around Joal are among the most fish-abundant in West Africa and this draws considerable attention from local and international traders. Women have traditionally processed and traded these products, but because they are rarely organized into cooperatives they tend to be exploited by outside buyers who at times force them to sell their products for as little as 100 CFA/kilo ($0.25/kilo). Benn Loxo – which means “one arm” in Wolof – was begun to strengthen the ability of Joal’s women to collectively bargain with buyers and generate better returns on their labor. At 157 members strong, the cooperative has the potential to do just that.

Recently the cooperative’s founder Fatoumata Ndiaye Lo provided WOW with an urgent funding request for 3 million CFA (approximately $7,500) to provide working capital to take advantage of the brief and lucrative octopus fishing season. While their concept was reasonable, WOW couldn’t act on it as quickly as Benn Loxo required because they were unable to provide any proof that this endeavor would be financially successful. Beyond this short-term project the cooperative has more ambitious plans to set up a central fish processing facility where the women could work as an organized unit (as opposed to their current loosely-organized structure), but have been unable to show that their objectives are attainable or feasible. This is in fact an obstacle to many of WOW’s portfolio companies, one that we are working hard to remedy. For this reason we took the initiative to prepare a feasibility study for Benn Loxo, but after speaking with Fatoumata it became clear that the cooperative was still in their preparatory stages and could not provide all of the necessary information to perform such a study.

Benn Loxo is not alone in its urgent requests for funding. One of WOW’s best organized and most promising portfolio companies – Marché.com – is seeking working capital to expand its operations and has good plan to carry this out. However, as our colleague Malick puts it, “these considerations are not simple,” and as WOW’s principle investment analyst he knows better than most. Malick explained that before WOW can disburse a new round of funding we need to put a new and better system in place to allow us to efficiently and responsibly respond to each requests. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, this is one of the responsibilities that the Summer Interns have taken on and we hope to make a solid contribution to such systems before the summer is out! Until next time,

~Christian

Meeting with Ludo for the website implementation

As per guidance from Linda, we kicked off work on the WOW Investments website. Ludo came to the WOW office and we had a three hour meeting with him during which we discussed various topics
- The layout of the website. We provided him with a detailed document which could potentially act as his site map as he begins designing.
- Website colors. We asked Ludo to work with the three WOW colours as the base; with blue being the potential focus for WOW investments. Linda sent us documents that have the three different color palettes – each focusing on either blue, orange or pink. We forwarded this to Ludo.
- Interactive and engaging website. We talked with Ludo about how we want the website to be interactive and engaging. This could be done by blogs, photographs, videos and allowing users to possibly add content as well. So that the website can ‘connect’ with those that have not been to Senegal, we explained that we would like to use a lot of images and pictures. Linda sent us pics from her previous visits to Senegal. Ludo will get back to us if the quality of the images is sufficient for the website.
- Using flash or not. Ludo explained the disadvantages of using Flash and how the Google crawler can have difficulties finding keywords. We told him that we will discuss this further with Linda and get back to him.
All in all, the meeting was very successful and we were able to make good progress. We will give him the green flag soon to start building sample pages for us and the US advisors to give feedback on.
Linda is going to discuss the website further with Caroline and get back to use regarding domain names we own and content for the different pages.
Karishma

Thursday at the office...

The team has decided to stay at the office and there were neither meeting nor visit on our daily program. We have planned to think about the WOW next steps and one of the most important points we discussed today were the website. As far as I am concerned, I focused on the Mountaga Tall business plan because Sadio, the CEO has called in the morning, saying she would need it the afternoon. She finally come and recover it around midday. After that, we spent most of our time on drafting the way we should work it out.

Linda called in the afternoon and we have all discussed and agreed on some parts of the design and the content of the website. We have planned to meet Ludovic Lima, the computer scientist who is in charge to set up our website tmorrow at 10 o'clock am.

Amara

Visit to Tissafric

We have decided today to pay a visit for the first time to Tissafric, a company specialized in woven fabrics. Tissafric makes up the WOW new company fortofolio. That is special for Karishma because it is her first company visit.

We went there in the morning and we have had a two hours meeting with the CEO Mrs Traoré. She exposed us the company needs in term of financing and her expectations from WOW activities. She made us know all problems that is encountering Tissafric and how she is planning to work with WOW.

In the afternoon, Linda has called at office so as to make sure we are at the level of comprehension. We have also finalize things we have to do for next days. She said she would call again tomorrow to give some directions to work out the WOW website.

Amara

New team, new challenges

Today is a particular day for us and the office is a bit empty. Laurent and Sachiko left Dakar on Friday, Rose and Aicha must go abroad to carry on with their studies and now it just remains Malick, Christian and I. But fortunately, a new trainee has joined us. Her name is Karishma BAIJAL and she come from India but is studying in US.

We are preparing our last meeting with Linda bacause she is leaving today. And it seems to be very important to know what to do for the next months.

She finally arrive at the WOW office around 12 o'clock. After two hours meeting, she left to prepare her trip. But before leaving, she has defined some goals that will be listed below:

- the elaboration of a web site

- the creation of a business center

-the development of company portofolio

And she wants us to thing about the human ressources that will be needed and the WOW products to develop.

these are the new goals that the new team we have to achieve.

Amara

OUR INTERSHIP END

The morning is a bit difficult today after a very full day yesterday and we arrive at the office late.
There is not fortunately lot of work and we have already finished the company reports and proposed due diligences to WOW. We felt we have already honored our contract. We didn't plan to meet Linda today and she seemed to very busy. Besides, she has gone to ASNAP (an agency specialized in community development) with Christian to try and built a partnership.
After having lunch, Rose, Aicha and I got to Oxfam GB in order to receive the rest of our wage.
At our return to the office, we have finalized the remaining work.
We finally left round 6 o'clock pm, wishing Laurent and Sachiko a nice trip. They are going to leave tomorrow.
So, this is the end of our 45 days internship.
Amara

Meeting with Linda

We have finally received and welcome Linda today at the WOW office around midday. After greetings and others "salamalecs", we have started discussing about companies and wrapinp-up our intership activities. At this step, it was question to talk about the amounts loaned to the current companies portofolio and its impact on their activities. After that, we thought together about the due diligences and the draft of standerdized process that WOW should adopt in order to get its activities more efficient.

After two hours meeting, Linda left, giving us an appointment to the restaurant nammed "La Fourchette" for a dinner.

At 9 o'clock pm, we have all met to the restaurant. After discussing for hours and taking the dinner, we have left around 11 o'clock pm, thinking about tomorrow, the last day of our intership program.

Amara

Linda has arrived

Linda, one of WOW's founders is visiting us in Dakar this week.

She is an extremely busy person in San Francisco, and here in Dakar as well. Today, she quickly visited WOW office in the morning and left for 6 meetings in the afternoon... We plan to welcome her tomorrow again to discuss our findings and wrap-up our internship program.

All the teams are finishing the company reports, while working on establishing the draft of standerdized process of WOW's investment activities. After one cycle of investments with trials and errors, now it is important for WOW to start formulating the "standerdized" process.

We are working well, inspired by hot Beijing Olympic games.


-Sachiko

completing due diligence process

Hi everybody, last post for me; 

Today, we complete our work started the last friday in the due diligence process. we gather all the ideas we had after visiting and studying all the portfolio company and came out with a standard model of Wow's process since the recruitment of companies to the final stages of the follow up.

We all hope that our little contribution will help Wow and the partners.

We're looking forward to see Linda and present to her what we came out with after six weeks of internship that had been a real pleasure.

Rose

The WOW Team on Due Diligence

Greetings,

After another hot weekend in Dakar the Summer Intern team will meet again tomorrow morning to put our heads together on the important topic of creating a due diligence process to help improve the impact and mitigate the risks of WOW’s investments. During these short 5 weeks some of our most important and engaging work has come in brainstorm sessions with each of us giving out contributions. While working in teams has allowed us to focus on specific companies and their particular strengths, needs, and problems, it is also productive (and fun) to put our heads together. With Laurent at the white board taking down ideas and helping to steer our discussions, we have come to some important understandings that should help WOW to continue its current success.

Sadly, this is our last week together as a team, with Sachiko and Laurent scheduled to leave on Friday. But it is also one of the more important weeks we’ll work together as we will be joined by Linda, a WOW founder, and work closely with her and Suparna, WOW’s CEO, on a range of topics. This will provide an opportunity for the team to give feedback on our experience and report on what we recognize as the achievements and challenges ahead. One of the more important considerations at hand is adapting WOW’s due diligence process in order to make its investments and services to portfolio companies more effective. The team’s experience from the last few weeks has given us value impressions that allow us to identify best (and worst) practices and thereby provide suitable input to the topic of due diligence.

We expect that this week of meetings will give us the chance to bring our recent experience to the fore and demonstrate the positive results of WOW’s Summer Intern Program. We also look forward to a nice dinner out with Linda, hopefully accompanied by some good Senegalese music!

Until next time,

~Christian

TissAfric and the "Manjaks"...

Friday morning started with a productive working session, where we focused on the due diligence process. Based on our interviews and company reviews so far, we identified a few critical steps that should be performed to ensure successful investment projects. Forecasting, definition of priorities and timeline with the entrepreneurs are among those steps. Other subjects of discussion remain for Monday. For example, how to handle unachievable objectives with an entrepreneur, or recover from a misuse of investment.

The afternoon gave us the opportunity to meet Mrs Traore from TrissAfric, an individual enterprise who produces innovative "pagnes tissés" and transform them into clothes, accessories, home furniture... She's looking to grow her business and is planning to invest in a a showroom to exhibit and sell her products. This interview allowed us to learn more about the "Manjaks",  who are naturally talented weavers from Mali, and with whom she has been working during her 13-year experience in this business.

Here comes our last weekend in Senegal for Sachiko and me, time flies.

~Laurent

salut les amis

Cette journée de jeudi, les stagiaires ont principalement travaillé au bureau de WOW sur la finalisation des rapports des premières entreprises et ont discuté longuement sur les nouvelles compagnies. Le matin aussi Laurent, Sachiko et Malick ont éffectué un déplacement à Hann Maristes ou ils devaient rencontrer les managers de Maïmouna Diop et Ibrahima Gueye et Oumou kalsoum Ndoye de Marché.Com. L’objectif était de discuter pour Restaurant Maye des perspectives de développement et de la pertinence de trouver un nouvel endroit pour le Restaurant. La rencontre avec Marché.Com n’a pu se tenir car Ibrahima devait livrer des commandes de produits, l’entretien étant reprogrammé pour le lendemain. Dans l’après midi Laurent a reçu Mme khady Cissé Gueye pour un autre entretien concernant toujours l’activité de « les Délices de la mer ». Et durant tout le reste de l’après midi les stagiaires ont continué à peaufiner les informations reçues afin de finaliser les rapports sur les nouvelles compagnies

Malick

Wednesday 6th at WOW office: General meeting for "Projet Boutique" cooperative and Bio Essence originality

hello,

This day was crowded of activities because first, there was between 8.00 am and 1.00 pm "projet boutique" meeting and second we met with "Entreprise Bracelets" and "Bio Essence" runners. After the first meeting which consisted of electing somebody president of the cooperative there was an apetising big meal cooked by "Chez May".

At 3.pm we exchange again with Sini Mboup, Bracelets' owner in order to find a way to better set up an accounting and forecasting frame because she really needs help.

Mame khary Gueye, Bio Essence's manager came to WOW office at 4.30 pm. She is a very amasing woman because she speaks fluent english, she got important degrees in Europe and USA, travelled all around the world and is 32 years old. In fact, she worked at big fims such as Paribas, Cap Gemini and now run a company with $1,000,000 capital.

Nevertheless, she is more focused on exportation because she benefit from many administrative facilities and therefore has to export 80% of her production.

Good vision in terms of quality and strategy is her strength.

-Aicha

Meeting with Dendey couture's manager

Today, we have worked by group on our respective report during all the moring. I was dealing with the SOPRA report, a company that is asking for 3,000,000 as financing while other groups were focusing on new companies fortofolio.

About 2 o'clock pm, Mouminou Niang has come and seen us just to discuss with us the problems she had met after receiving the WOW financing. She has started by explaining us the circumstances in which she had got the funds and how she had failed in her project. After that, she has made us know the long way she had taken to get out from her difficult situation and to succed in reimbursing the loan.

She has left about 5 o'clock asking for another financing after paying back the current loan she had already received from WOW. Amara

New company analysis

This morning, we had a meeting to talk about how we can work on new companies. One of our missions is to evaluate the new companies to invest. Up to this point, we have mostly focused on current portfolio companies, and now is the time to start looking at new ones.

We started by evaluating the process of WOW so far since the first investment of last year. Was our due-diligence process rigorous enough? If not, how should we do differently this year? Have we followed up the invested companies well enough so far?

After our brain storming session, we modified the evaluation form, and each team took two new companies to work on during last two weeks of this internship.

By the way, interns of last summer put "WACIF I" in the header of every report, but nobody this year knows what it stands for... Any idea?

-Sachiko

Presenting our reports

This friday was dedicated to the finalization and presentation of our reports.
We spent the morning at wow office discussing about our reports while Christian and Amara where in a meeting with the manager of the GIE benn loxo to complete some informations they needed.

In the afternoon, after having a lunch at wow's office, we went to oxfam to meet Suparna and talk with her about the work each group did with the portfolio companies. During that meeting we had the opportunity to discuss with Linda, one of the four founders of wow, about our reports and some of her expectations for this internship.

Next week we'll work on the new portfolio companies; looking forward!

Rose

Visit to OXFAM... and Thé Ataya

Since the electricity was not back to WOW office until noon, we spent the morning in a meeting room at OXFAM GB. It was a short distance walk to go there. We had everything to work in good conditions there. It was a busy day since everybody focused on the reports for the portfolio companies. We exchanged our drafts during the morning.  We spent the afternoon as usual at WOW office, had lunch here, and as we were finalizing our documents, we enjoyed drinking our daily "Thé Ataya".  

~Laurent

Electricity cut

Bonjour tout le monde,

je suis Elhadji Malick Gaye plus connu sous le nom de Malick. je suis agent de WOW en même temps que Coordonnateur du stage.

Tout s'est bien passé jusqu'ici, car vous savez qu'au Sénégal depuis des mois les populations par zone sont privées d'éléctricité une bonne partie de la journée mais ce n'était jamais le cas pour le quartier de Sicap Amitié 3 ou se situe le bureau de WOW. 

Mais ce mercredi les stagiaires n'ont pu vraiment presque rien faire au bureau car il y'a eu coupure le matin à 7 heures jusqu'au lendemain vers 12 heures soit près de 30 heures sans éléctricité; ce fut un calvaire mais comme les stagiaires ont été scindés en équipes, l'équipe de Christian-Amara avait pris rendez- vous avec Sadio pour compléter le travail déjà démarré, l'équipe de Rose-Aïssatou, elle, avait programmé une visite à Enda Ecopole pour rencontrer jacques de fer forgé pour un complément d'information sur son activité, malheureusement, Aïssatou perd son beau-frère et n'a pu effectué le déplacement mais Rose très dynamique, a pu faire le travail avec beaucoup d'énergie et de determination. Moi, Laurent et sachiko, sommes restés au bureau et chacun accomplissant une tache se liant au travail et discuttant sur certains points.

Je vous dis à bientôt pour un autre compte rendu

Malick

Working in small teams...

Hello! Today, each small team worked on different portfolio companies. We started to prepare first drafts of reports, based on yesterday's outline. Some of us re-visited or re-contacted the companies to get more information or express ideas for future growth steps. 

Sachiko and I went back to Marché.com and Restaurant Chez Maye this morning. With the first company, we reviewed her priorities in terms of financing and how the owner and her son are envisioning their future development. We started to define future investment/growth phases with them and key business drivers. With Maye, we suggested potential scenarios to develop her activity . She was particularly interested in one of them. We plan to meet her again to discuss the feasibility and financial features of that scenario.

It was another productive and interesting day. Tomorrow should bring additional insights...

~Laurent

Planning our next steps

Hello readers, this is Christian, WOW’s “Expert Intern” for the summer program. To follow up on Sachiko, Laurent, Rose and Aicha’s great posts, I wanted to give you an update of our current activities.

Having finished the first set of meetings and interviews with the directors of WOW’s present and future portfolio companies last Friday, we settled into a planning session today to map out our strategy for the next three weeks. This week we plan on updating the quarterly reports for the companies who have already received WOW funding. This will allow us to better assess the impact these investments have had by analyzing whether these funds have allowed these companies to take concrete steps towards their objectives. It will also allow us to think about improving our due diligence process so to make future support for WOW’s partners more appropriate and effective.

The second task for the week is to begin reporting on the new set of companies which will be incorporated into WOW’s portfolio. These reports are important considering they give investors a chance to better acquaint themselves with prospects and risks associated with each company. As we have learned up to now, some of the first round of investments were put to good use and others less so; we therefore hope that the summer internship’s primary contribution will be to create tools and models to help both WOW and its partners align their common goals to foster rapid and sustainable development of promising Senegalese businesses.

To better achieve our aims we have broken into 3 small groups: Aicha and Rose are working on the two Enda Ecopole businesses and Entreprises Bracelets, Laurent and Sachiko have taken on Marché.com and Chez Maye, while Amara and I are focusing on Mountaga Tall and Ben Loxo. The scope of work is considerable and the challenges clear, but we are determined to put our heads together and rise to the occasion!

Until next time,

~Christian

Île de Gorée

Laurent and I visited "Île de Gorée," a small island just 3km away from the seaport of Dakar.

Gorée is one of 5 world heritages in Senegal. Gorée was once used as a port to export slaves, and a few buildings left from the days reminds us of the horrible history.

At the same time, Gorée today is a popular beach for Senegalese, and all the boats going to Gorée are full during the weekend. You can enjoy the beach, or stay relax at a beach side restaurant, or walk around the calm nice town with beautiful flowers.

We had a relaxing moment there, relieved of always energetic Dakar.

-Sachiko

Work sharing out

hello readers, this is Amara , wow's trainee.

I am just coming and making you informed the way the work were shared.

After vissiting all the companies together and discussing the situation of each of them, we decided to divide the team into three groups of two persons. And each groupe is in charge to deal with two companies. As for me, I form a tandem with Christian and we are working on GIE Mountaga TALL and Benn Loxo. For each company, we are involved in writing a final report and elaborating a business plan in order to help them to get their project more clear.

Before sharing the team into groups, we all agree to adopt the same report format that includes four parts: the company description, the investment assessement, the business analysis and recommendations and lessons learnt and best practices.

Thursday, Visiting "Delices de la Mer" and "FEEM Design"

hello!
This day is very interesting in terms of discovery because we visit on the morning "Delices de la Mer" wich is a company managed by a very ambicious woman.

The manager, Khady Cisse, works in the fish and sea product processing. She is looking for certifiation in order to export products all around the world. She got a graduate degree in a business school but she did not want to work in a firm as un employee because she trust in free entreprise and sustainable improvment of her community by processing natural product. In order to help other women to inhance their entrepreneurship skills, she also train them to process natural fruits and vegetables.
She really want to participate to her country's development trough her business.

On the afternoon we visit a fashion shop named "FEEM Design" and lead by Yaye Fatou. It is an artistical show room with a friendly atmosphere within it is exibit original dress models.

Yaye and all her staff are designers and want to satisfy embroderi's demand because she is only specialised and focus in paint. Amid employees we have painters, taylors and those who work with pearl.She get a large portfolio of clientele and sell 70% of her products in africa and 30% in Europe and USA. Yaye Fatou also get an increase profit rate of 10% every year, this is why she is motivated to buy new machines and employ more staff.

These are the last visits of the week because friday will be reserved for brainstorming session.

-Aicha

Visiting GIE benn Loxo at JOAL

This is Rose and I'm posting for the first time.
This wednesday, everybody woke up early because we were leaving at 7:00 am for our trip to Joal, a small town on the littke coast, two hours from dakar. Since there were no traffic jam, we get there around 9:00.

At the house of the president of the GIE, we discussed with the women and learnt about different types of fish and seafoods and how they transform them.
Then we went to the "Khelcom" market, the biggest fish market in Joal and in the region.
The last visit of the day were to the little port of Joal were we found men getting huge quantities of yet (cymbium) out of their shells.
We ended this trip, after an excellent "thiebou dien", and went back, all exhausted, but most happy to have been out of the city for a day.

-Rose

Meeting with the Chambre de Commerce

Today started fast as we reviewed yesterday's companies and gathered our thoughts and observations. Another great working session, enhanced by the use of our new white board. We also divided the team into groups of 2 that could focus more specifically on 2 or 3 current portfolio companies in the coming week.

In the afternoon, we had the opportunity to meet with the Chambre de Commerce in Dakar. After learning quickly about their history and organization, and explaining the purpose of WOW to them, we talked more specifically about small and middle-sized companies. The institution realized a few months ago that it would be useful to provide more data about the economical landscape of Senegal to the general public, and will eventually publish key figures mid-August. Also, the training department is just starting to plan and design new modules targeting more specifically the non-formalized companies, which represent the great majority of small companies here. Also, they try to simplify the formalization process. They seem open to a partnership with WOW, which should be discuss with the president or secretary of the Chambre.

~Laurent

Visiting new portfolio companies

Hello! Today, we visited 2 other companies. Those haven't yet received funds from WOW, but are excellent candidates. They belong to different industries: food/condiments and well-being/body-care:

• SOPRA
• Bio Essences

Our first visit was SOPRA and was clearly inspiring. Ami Dimé, 

the woman who founded the company started with 500 Fr cfa in the 90's, and is now employing 9 people and transforming/producing up to 200kg of pepper products daily. Those products contain no additives. We felt she had a true entrepreneurship spirit. She developed a loyal customer base among different communities over the years. She recently innovated with a new green pepper sauce. 

The next visit was Bio Essences. This company is very different from the ones that we had the opportunity to meet so far.  They made a large upfront investment to create, produce and promote high-quality karité-based products for the body. They started their production phase only a year ago. This company has a significant potential for growth. This would be very exciting to accompany them during their starting-up phase. We had the opportunity to visit the facility which includes very new equipment, a large lab and a highly clean production line.

That was another interesting day!

Tomorrow, the team will spend time at the office and visit the Chamber of Commerce in the afternoon.

~Laurent

Saint-Louis

Saint-Louis was very worth visiting. The "ville" is on an island, in the middle of the "Senegal" river and was mostly built during the 19th century. Most of the houses have wonderful colors and make the island very charming. This is a World Heritage site. The city is relatively small, thus less hectic than Dakar. Despite some rains, and a longer than expected trip to get there, we felt Saint-Louis was a great place to spend the weekend. 

~Laurent 

Friday at the office...

The office is in a great house with a lot of space/rooms that will allow WOW to provide training, exhibition, working spaces for the partners. Everything is getting set up day after day. There's more and more furniture. We have now white boards in the meeting room. A printer and 2 desktops arrived this morning and might get ready to work next week. It's very exciting to be part of an organization that is growing and getting structured for the next steps. 

Today was our 2nd brainstorming session, which focused on Entreprise Bracelets and the 2 workshops from Enda Ecopole. We kept the same analysis framework, since we felt it works well and trigger good discussions. Like on Wednesday, it went very smoothly. We thought that we could get more information about one of the workshops. Malick will try to get another appointment with the manager next week. Those working sessions are very good since, as we bring business ideas to the table, we need to consider the Senegalese culture and its specificities. It makes the discussions very enriching and valuable. 

Here comes the weekend. Everybody will have different activities. Sachiko and I plan to go to Saint-Louis. This should be a great opportunity to discover the country and visit a charming city :-)

~Laurent

Enda Ecopole and Entreprise Bracelets

Good evening, we just finished speaking with Seni, from the Entreprise Bracelets, who creates and sells a wide range of small art products, such as bracelets, necklaces, decoration dolls, and many other beautiful creations... We felt she had an excellent knowledge of the market she targets. We learnt how she uses unique selling techniques and how she would like to expand her business and increase her company's revenue. We talked about different scenarios she has in mind to strengthen her presence in the markets of Dakar.

This morning was very booked, since we went to Enda Ecopole and had the opportunity to meet many people, and discover its neighborhood and its network of activities. Enda Ecopole is a very interesting organization that promotes small urban 

economy by providing support and to the young people who don't have access to school and face difficulties getting jobs. Through a wide range of activities, or workshops, they have an opportunity to get hands-on training and gain confidence. WOW provided funds to 2 of those workshops. One is focusing on transforming pieces of metals (such as used bottles caps) into art objects and furniture. The other one is creating iron-based products such as doors, stairs, or fences... using recycled pieces when possible.

It will be exciting to put down our thoughts about those companies tomorrow at the office.

~Laurent

First brainstorming sessions

Today morning was very interesting as we sat down and exchanged our ideas about the companies we visited yesterday. Our approach was very much about analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of each company and identifying opportunities and risks. We decided to follow the same framework to structure our working sessions. After 1.5 to 2h gathering our thoughts about GIE Mountaga Tall, Marché.com and Restaurant Chez Maye, we defined our next steps, especially deciding if further analysis would be necessary, and which kind.

Lunchtime is usually late, around 2pm or 2:30pm, but very good since we now eat Senegalese food prepared for us at the office. 

In the afternoon, we had an appointment with Ecobank. The agency 

manager, Sanou, provided us with a good overview of her bank, and the Senegalese banking system in general. Our overall perception was that the Senegalese banking system today is not ready to offer credit to anybody or any entity without strong guarantee, especially to small and middle-size companies that are at a pre-growing stage and are not mature enough. What we learned from that interview confirms that WOW is uniquely positioned to assist the most promising ones among those companies, and therefore contribute to the development of the Senegalese economy.

~Laurent

First day with WOW partners

Here we are! After reading previous reports about the different companies and women who received loans from WOW, we started to visit some of them today. The companies were :

• GIE Oumou Mountaga TALL
  
• Restaurant Chez Maye
• Marché.com

The three are all situated in the suburbs of Dakar. A quick taxi trip under a hot sun brought us to GIE Oumou Mountaga TALL. The leader of the organization Sadio, is a highly skilled and organized woman, who can transform any cereals, fruits and vegetables into high quality products. For 3 hours, we got to know her vision, how she plans to grow her business, what her next steps are, and eventually visited the transformation center. She looked determined and really looking forward to working with WOW. 

Restaurant Chez Maye was our next stop. It came at a good moment, so that we can had lunch. After walking through the huge construction

site surrounding our destination, we enjoyed eating and getting to know Maye, who had prepared an excellent meal for us. We were impressed by her creativity and cooking background. An electricity cut didn't prevent us from spending a fruitful time with her, learning about her long-term plans, and the current economic situation in Senegal, where grain and energy prices, among others, are surging.

It didn't take us much time to walk to the next partner, 

Marché.com, situated just next door. Meeting Mrs Ndoye and her son was a really inspiring moment.  Through dedication and careful planning, they developed innovative delivery services of food, and other products to an untapped market: the women with occupations. We were impressed by their approach to customer service and how they are building a core group of loyal clients.

Our first day with the partners was very instructive and confirm my belief that we will learn a lot during the following days and weeks. Indeed, Malick prepared a pretty dense planning, with about 15 interviews for the coming 2 weeks. We will meet current portfolio companies, potential partners, and other organizations (e.g."Chambre de Commerce", Ecobank) from which we could learn more about the small and middle-size business economy.

Looking forward to the next visits...

-Laurent

Kick-off; Summer Internship Program

Today, the summer internship team got together.



In the morning, Suparna, our CEO, Malick, Christian(development expert who is helping WOW this summer) and 5 interns met at WOW's office. Meeting started with watching a WOW's video(http://wowforafrica.com/wow/), and after quick introductions of each of us, Suparna gave us an idea of WOW's mission, portofolio companies, Economy of Senegal, and her expectation of this summer internship.



We learnt that the goals of this summer internship program are still open-ended. In addition to help current portofolio companies, WOW has a few projects, such as opening a business center for local entrepreneurs, starting business training sessions etc. Also, how WOW should be organized might need consideration. Suparna emphasized that she wanted us not only to focus on "what to do," but also to create the system/frameworks on which WOW can work on in an efficient way in the future.

Anyway, I was very happy to meet our Senegalese buddies today!



-Sachiko