{"id":2920,"date":"2022-07-13T16:56:08","date_gmt":"2022-07-13T16:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/finbit.co\/?p=2920"},"modified":"2022-07-13T16:56:09","modified_gmt":"2022-07-13T16:56:09","slug":"seizing-opportunities-jean-paul-entrepreneur-in-thies-senegal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/finbit.co\/am\/2022\/07\/13\/seizing-opportunities-jean-paul-entrepreneur-in-thies-senegal\/","title":{"rendered":"Seizing Opportunities \u2013 Jean Paul, Entrepreneur in Thies, Senegal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jean Paul, who is responsible for L-IFT\u2019s\u00a0Corner Shop<\/em>\u00a0project in Senegal, is an entrepreneur. He\u2019s been producing and selling ice cream since 2015.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Fig 1: Students queuing to buy ice cream from Jean Paul (left)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

He started selling ice cream at a local school but when the school began to sell food to the students, Jean Paul was considered a competitor and was asked to stop his activity there. He\u2019s been selling ice cream from home since then. The same students are still buying from him after school, as well as people from his neighborhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes, Jean Paul and his assistant also sell homemade fruit juice, depending on the demand but also on his financial situation: fruit juice is much cheaper to produce than ice cream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Fig 2: Jean Paul\u2019s assistant selling fruit juice<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In 2019, he invested in a water filtration system and he started selling filtered water from home.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Fig 3: Water filtration system<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Due to the pandemic, Jean Paul can no longer produce and sell ice cream but his filtered water business is still working. And actually, that\u2019s how he started his most recent business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like most countries, Senegal encourages its citizens not to use cash but rather mobile money for their transactions wherever possible. Many customers asked Jean Paul if he provided mobile money services \u2013 depositing, withdrawing and sending money, paying invoices, buying airtime, etc. He understood there was an opportunity to seize. In addition, due to the pandemic, the fee for becoming a provider \u2013 which is normally around 40,000 XOF, which is about 65 USD \u2013 was eliminated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his area \u2013 about 2,200 inhabitants \u2013 there are only 4 or 5 providers like him. Most of his customers are either people who buy filtered water from him or people who heard from him through the latter; word of mouth is the best way to advertise.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Fig 4: The last transaction recorded \u2013 1000 XOF \u2013 was based on trust: Jean Paul received a phone call from a regular customer who asked him to deposit 1000 XOF onto his mobile money account. He told Jean Paul he would pay him on the following day. That kind of trust-based transaction happens frequently.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Commissions are low but he intends to continue this business even after the lock-down, as it doesn\u2019t take up too much of his time and it won\u2019t prevent him from working on his ice cream and water businesses. This activity was not something he\u2019d planned but it presented itself to Jean Paul and he tapped into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Fig 5: Jean Paul (middle) in 2019 with his researchers when he worked as a supervisor for L-IFT.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jean Paul, who is responsible for L-IFT\u2019s\u00a0Corner Shop\u00a0project in Senegal, is an entrepreneur. He\u2019s been producing and selling ice cream since 2015. He started selling ice cream at a local school but when the school began to sell food to the students, Jean Paul was considered a competitor and was asked to stop his activity […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2921,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/finbit.co\/am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/finbit.co\/am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/finbit.co\/am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finbit.co\/am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finbit.co\/am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2920"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/finbit.co\/am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2920\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2922,"href":"https:\/\/finbit.co\/am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2920\/revisions\/2922"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finbit.co\/am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/finbit.co\/am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finbit.co\/am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finbit.co\/am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}