Aïda KOENAO worked as a security guard for many years. Today, she is a company director and employs several people.
His company, SODEL, specialises in drying vegetables. Despite difficult beginnings, SODEL's products have won over the taste buds of the local population and eventually established themselves on the market. As well as dried onions, the company also produces tomato powder, dried okra powder, dried parsley powder and a variety of culinary broths.
Aïda KOENAO has simple and clear ambitions for her business. Over the next few years, she hopes to acquire better equipment, employ more women, increase her production capacity and expand her network in the sub-region.
His company, SODEL, specialises in drying vegetables. Despite difficult beginnings, SODEL's products have won over the taste buds of the local population and eventually established themselves on the market. As well as dried onions, the company also produces tomato powder, dried okra powder, dried parsley powder and a variety of culinary broths.
Aïda KOENAO has simple and clear ambitions for her business. Over the next few years, she hopes to acquire better equipment, employ more women, increase her production capacity and expand her network in the sub-region.
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Court métrageTranscription
00:00 I worked as a guard for a long time.
00:03 And today I am a CEO,
00:06 I have people under my command
00:08 who work for me and I can pay them for myself.
00:10 It's really a pride.
00:12 When I finished my secondary studies in Bobo,
00:19 I arrived here and I first started working as a guard.
00:22 I did some time in the guard's work
00:25 and then I found myself in command of a few hundred people
00:30 who also work as guards.
00:31 So then I found myself very discouraged from this job
00:35 because there were many, many difficulties.
00:37 And I said to myself, why not create something?
00:40 And there I created my own universe, which is drying.
00:43 This is dried onion wrapped
00:53 which can be used in different forms.
00:55 That is, we can use this onion to make onion powder.
00:59 We can also rehydrate them to make onion puree with.
01:03 Or we can use them in this form in the sauce.
01:06 This is onion powder for barbecue or other seasonings.
01:10 The idea came because here in Burkina we have
01:13 a seasonal time of vegetables.
01:15 The vegetables are found at the same time
01:17 and the vegetables also disappear at the same time.
01:19 When there is abundance of vegetables on the market,
01:22 the merchants or the producers do not even know what to do.
01:25 So our duty is to recover the surplus,
01:29 to transform it, to dry it,
01:30 to be able to make the product available all year round.
01:34 The beginning was really difficult
01:42 because you had to find a place to settle
01:46 and also the acquisition of materials.
01:48 Since we had just started, we had just started without support.
01:51 It was so complicated to get the materials to work.
01:55 From the beginning, when I started making dehydrated onions
01:58 and put them on the market, it was a new product for people.
02:02 And those who passed by, they looked and said,
02:04 "What is this?"
02:05 We were at our beginnings, we had not yet put the emphasis on
02:09 packaging, labels, to better explain the product.
02:13 So it was complicated for it to come out.
02:15 I wanted to give up, but I said to myself,
02:17 "No, if I took this path, I have to continue until the end."
02:21 (sound of machine)
02:24 I would say that there has been an evolution.
02:27 At first, we did not make a lot of products like that.
02:32 We made a lot of onions.
02:34 But now I see that we add a lot of other products.
02:38 In two to five years, we see a company that is a leader
02:43 in the transformation of drying vegetables.
02:46 Acquiring adequate equipment,
02:48 employing more women to achieve these objectives.
02:51 We have put several strategies in place,
02:54 notably in marketing, the client approach,
02:57 to be able to expand our network.
02:58 We are in the process of expanding our network in the sub-region,
03:01 which will help us produce more and then be able to flow.
03:06 (music)
03:11 (music)
03:16 you