Senegal

Loan to Jiggen Power UP! project in Senegal

In December 2020, Village Aid supported the Jiggen Power UP! project in Senegal, as part of The Big Give Christmas Challenge. Together, we raised a fantastic £29,382. Thanks to your support, the project is enabling women’s businesses to thrive, powered by green energy.

Part of the funding was to install automatic husking machines powered by the solar grid, so that the women can husk cereals and grains in much larger quantities and therefore process more cereal products, meet local demand, and increase their income.

But as the women are just starting out they don’t have enough savings to purchase large amounts of peanuts which is in turn limiting the amount of peanut oil they can produce.

They have had training on how to store the peanuts and they have the facilities to store huge quantities. Whilst they are able to produce, save and buy, in a few months the peanut season will be over so it won’t be possible to buy them.
Village Aid has agreed to loan the project funds so they can purchase a large quantity of peanuts to kick start their peanut oil production and continue to work during the off season.

During the off season peanut oil is typically not available since small enterprises cannot produce when there are no peanuts on the market so this loan is going to give them a huge advantage and will make them virtually the only supplier of peanut oil in the region, therefore giving them access to an increase client base.