Startupbootcamp (SBC)

The Problem

Currently over 23% of Senegalese youth between 20-29 are unemployed, and 90% of those employed work in unstable informal jobs, particularly in agriculture, which employs 60% of the Senegalese population. This has led to significant social unrest, culminating in a series of demonstrations and an uptick in illegal and dangerous migration. Despite agriculture employing such large amount of youth, they struggle to earn decent incomes in the sector. This is due to lack of funding, insufficient training and skills, high seasonality of the sector, and limited access to mechanisation to ensure year-round production. This severe lack of decent employment opportunities has led youth feeling dissatisfied and hopeless about their futures and has forced them to move into bigger cities or even attempt dangerous ways of illegal immigration.  If provided with opportunities to earn a decent, stable livelihood, rural youth would prioritise lower income in their home communities over migrating to urban areas. 

Moreover, young women in rural Senegal face additional challenges that hinder their productivity and earning power. Certain communal norms perceive women working and making financial decisions as detrimental to their children and the community at large. This is a clear barrier for women seeking employment in Senegal, and as a result women are twice as likely to be unemployed than men.  

SBC’s startups have a proven track record of inflicting socioeconomic change in their home countries. However, there is a lack of resources and long-term support to create sustained impact in Senegal after the three-month accelerator ends. More funding is needed to build meaningful and lasting change.  

The Solution

In response to these challenges, Startupbootcamp designed a Sustaining Senegalese Pilot (SSP) program. Its motive is not profit-making, but rather the scaling and embedding of the startups’ impact in Senegal. The project will leverage the Startupbootcamp’s ability to create jobs by developing pilot programs with local organisations and youth. The project will address local challenges in various sectors, such as agriculture, healthcare, and green energy, and create and improve 1,200 youth jobs of which 60% target women. While SSP will engage in various pilots, the project will focus heavily on a special pilot called The Constellation, which will create jobs by addressing the problems of Senegalese agricultural sector.  

The Constellation addresses the challenges and aspirations expressed especially by rural youth by improving, creating and matching jobs. This will be done by providing technical skills training in climate-smart agriculture, farming crops with 60% longer shelf-time, and offering indirect financing for better farming equipment, leading to increased incomes. Job security will also be improved through fair wages, skills development, and inclusivity. Moreover, the Constellation aims to enhance market access and youth employment by hiring youth as logistics and sales coordinators that deliver the harvest to bigger markets.  

Finally, the project will drive employment access within the male-dominated agricultural space by encouraging and prioritising women. This will be done by e.g. engaging with community leaders to help break harmful norms towards women working.   

Through these implementations, The Constellation can achieve year-round cultivation and provide market access, enabling rural youth to finally earn a decent, stable income directly in agriculture, or in related roles such as logistics coordinators, salespeople, metal fabricators or solar tricycle builders.