Entrepreneurs

Comoé Capital’s first investment as part of the Education Impact Fund (an initiative supported by the Jacobs Foundation), Vallesse is an Ivoirian publishing house founded in 2005 by Fidèle Diomandé, an entrepreneur committed to youth education in Côte d'Ivoire. VALLESSE's editorial collection consists of four collections and some thirty works in the fields of general, school and children's literature.

African International Schools group Enko Education has announced the launch of two new schools, which will open at the beginning of the new academic year in September 2018: Enko Bamako International School in Bamako, Mali and Enko Ouaga International School in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. These new schools embody the vision of Enko Education to increase access to a high-quality international education for students on the African continent.

Fabien Tondel from ECDPM's Great Insights magazine spoke to Sylvie Sagbo, Managing Director of SENAR Les Délices Lysa, a Senegalese manufacturer of food products, and Cécile Carlier, Director of I&P Conseil, the advisory branch of Paris-based Investisseurs & Partenaires, which supports and invests in emerging small and medium-sized enterprises in Africa.

SENAR Les Délices de Lysa is a Senegalese family business specializing in the processing of peanuts, cashews and maize. Created in 1982 by Lydie Sagbo, the company is managed since 2015 by her daughter, Sylvie Sagbo. In November 2017 SENAR formalizes a partnership with Teranga Capital, an investment fund sponsored by I&P dedicated to Senegalese SMEs and start-ups.

African international schools group Enko Education, founded by Cyrille Nkontchou and Eric Pignot, has taken a new step in its development, acquiring the West African College of the Atlantic (WACA) in Dakar, Senegal.

WACA is the 10^th school to join Enko’s network, already implement in five Sub-Saharan countries (Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Mozambique, Senegal and South Africa).

PEG is a young company headquartered in Ghana which aims to bring off-grid solar energy access to rural and peri-urban communities in West Africa by providing pay-as-you-go (PAYG) solar home systems to rural and remote customers.

With the support of Power Africa, PEG is implementing gender-inclusive business practices in the off-grid energy sector in West Africa, which are detailed in a recent article published by Medium.

The latest edition of the quarterly magazine « Private Sector and Development » focuses on the issue of African medicine. As recalled by Philippe Abecassis and Nathalie Coutinet in the introduction, access to proper medicine is a major challenge for African countries. The African Continent only accounts for 3% of global output while 95% of the medicines consumed in Africa are imported. In some African countries, counterfeit products represent half of all drugs on the market.

PEG Africa, the leading off-grid solar company in West Africa, is pleased to announce it has successfully raised US$13.5 million through a combination of debt and a Series B equity financing. The proceeds will be used to accelerate growth in Ghana and Ivory Coast, where PEG is already a sector leader, to reach 500,000 people.

I&P works with PEG since 2015 and helps the company to structure and develop its activities in Ghana and in the sub-region.

The European Venture Philanthropy Association (EVPA) launched a new website featuring a set of innovative projects supported by foundations and impact funds. The Senegalese company NEST counts among the ‘’success stories’’ selected by EVPA.

The stories showcase how these companies respond to social and environmental challenges and how those supporting them (foundations and impact funds) have supported these projects in achieving and scaling their social impact.