“Before the coaching, I had this thought stuck in my head that if I fell, I wouldn't be able to get back on my feet,” says 27-year-old entrepreneur Hafssatou Maïga, referring to her poultry business. She is one of the “rising stars” of Generation Food, an agrifood business incubator organised in Ouagadougou. What can change when young food entrepreneurs such as Hafssatou get concrete, tailored support, and what does that mean for the city they feed?
In Burkina Faso, over 90% of businesses operate informally, without registration, bookkeeping or taxation. Most of these are micro-enterprises in the food sector, concentrated in the capital city of Ouagadougou. The poultry sector alone supplies 80,000 chickens to the city every day1.
Those numbers are the result of hard work since the founders are largely self-taught. A study of business failure in Burkina Faso found that 66% of entrepreneurs started out with no training in business2 management.
Generation Food is a Rikolto initiative, active in cities across Africa, Europe and Latin America. In each city, it is co-designed with local partners, because what works in one context does not automatically work in another.
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In Ouagadougou, that partner is ADEU, the Urban Economic Development Agency of the Municipality. And with them, the lessons learned from the first cohort were put into practice in the second. A first cohort ran from 2021 to 2023 with 77 young entrepreneurs; this was a large group that required eight coaches and significant resources. For the second cohort, the team decided to deliver focused coaching to the selected group of entrepreneurs.
That second edition ran from 2024 to 2025, funded by YOUCA, a Belgian organisation that channels young people's earnings into social projects worldwide. Another 15 young entrepreneurs were selected from 62 candidates, who went through a competitive hackathon and pitch process. Hafssatou, Issouf and Eunice were among them.
Every year, thousands of students in Belgium dedicate one day working and donate their earnings to youth-led projects in other countries. Through this mechanism, YOUCA supports programmes that provide training, coaching, and seed funding to young entrepreneurs. The second cohort of Generation Food in Ouagadougou is one of the projects they chose to fund.
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Eunice SANA always knew food was her field. A graduate in Food Safety, she founded NAFYA Agro, a company specialising in fruit and vegetable processing. Before Generation Food, she explains, the income her business generated was absorbed by household needs, leaving little room to invest, grow or plan ahead.
Issouf BELEM was 26 when he joined the second cohort. He manages Barka Green Industries, a company he grew from a small cooperative into an agri-food processing business specialising in nutritious local plants, moringa, lemongrass, verbena. Still studying food safety at university, he heard about Generation Food and travelled more than 440 kilometres to take part in the selection rounds. He did not hesitate, he says.
Hafssatou MAIGA started her poultry business at 22, while still in high school. By the time she joined Generation Food at 27, she had five years of experience but had never participated in a formal training or mentoring programme. She came, she says, driven purely by the motivation to succeed.
The problems felt everywhere. Eunice's cash flow was inconsistent, money came in but rarely stayed long enough to reinvest. Issouf was stretched between his university studies and the demands of a growing business. "Personally, I found staff management to be a significant challenge," he admits. Hafssatou was convinced that what she lacked most was money.
To work through these barriers, the Generation Food team assigned two coaches, Kiswensida Emmanuel Paul Aimé Sawadogo and Marina Adeline Kabore/Nikiéma, to work alongside the fifteen selected entrepreneurs.
Kiswensida and Marina were involved in designing the programme from the start and also delivered the training modules on marketing and management.
The first phase of their coaching was guiding each entrepreneur to draw up their business plan. The second phase kicked in only after their business plans had been given the green light and the seed funding was in place, either to launch the new start-ups or to boost the existing business.
“As part of the follow-up process, we noticed that many entrepreneurs were very receptive, they asked to be corrected” - Kiswensida Emmanuel Paul Aimé SAWADOGO, Certified Business Coach.
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The role of the coaches was not to do the work for the entrepreneurs, but to walk alongside them long enough that they could do it themselves.
"The coach offers guidance, but it is important to understand they won't be there forever. Real support means helping entrepreneurs develop the skills to manage their businesses independently," - Fidélia Christelle KABORE (née SAWADOGO), Generation Food Project Manager at ADEU.
That relationship did not end when the programme did. A year later, Issouf still calls his coach when he hits a difficult situation. "These are people with whom we have demystified the role of the coach," says Kiswensida. "It is about follow-up, not pressure, helping them understand that everything the programme gave them is the package that will make them good entrepreneurs."
Eunice now runs her business with a structure she did not have before. She is tracking her cash flow, manages her stock, and has put someone in charge of accounting. The grant allowed her to purchase a high-capacity grinder, which means she can now produce in bulk. Her workforce has grown from two employees to five. Her next goal is to get a second grinder, to expand her range of natural juices, herbal teas and local instant sauces into more dried products.
In the meantime, Issouf formalised his business during the programme, a significant step in a city where most entrepreneurs do not reach formal status. The formalisation opened doors for him, since he can now bid for contracts.
His turnover has more than doubled, from 18,293 € per year to 38,112 € by 2025. With his grant, he acquired a motorised pump, pipes and moringa seeds, boosting the productivity of his farm. He has eight permanent employees and plans to make moringa production a separate arm of his business.
"If there hadn't been any coaching, we would have attended the training sessions and then, once back, everyone would have gone about their business," he says. "We've had coaches who really push us to absorb these training sessions so we can move forward."
Hafssatou now knows where her money goes. "When I produce something, I know exactly how much I've earned." With her grant and her own savings, she bought a tricycle. She now employs around ten people. Her ambitions are in the direction of having access to more land, modernising her chicken coops, and developing her own sausages.
At ADEU, Generation Food has become part of the agency's standard support offer for young entrepreneurs.
"Some of the businesses we have supported are now at the semi-industrial stage," says Fidélia Christelle KABORE, Generation Food Project Manager at ADEU. "We have been able to play a real role in promoting entrepreneurship — and that is fully in line with our mission."
"Coaching requires resources, financial ones included," adds Innocent YAOGO, Project Manager at Rikolto. "We continue to mobilise the expertise needed to consolidate these businesses so they can contribute meaningfully to Ouagadougou's food system."
The results of the second cohort are already feeding into AfriFOODlinks, an EU-funded programme working to make urban food systems in Ouagadougou healthier and more sustainable.
Eunice's juices and sauces extend the shelf life of local produce. Issouf's moringa farm addresses nutritional gaps the city has struggled with for decades. Hafssatou's poultry operation is part of a sector that feeds the city's economy. In a city where much of the food sold in markets and on the streets still falls short of basic hygiene and nutritional standards, entrepreneurs like these are part of the answer, and they now have the tools to prove it.
1Yaméogo, C. (2024). State of City Food System Report for Ouagadougou, AfriFOODlinks project.
2Étude sur la mortalité des entreprises créées au CEFORE Burkina Faso, 2015.
Contributors: Bernadette OUATTARA (Rikolto). Field visit organised by Innocent YAOGO (Rikolto) and KABORE née SAWADOGO Fidélia Christelle (ADEU). This story was edited by Selene Casanova (Rikolto) with select editorial processes supported by AI tools.
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