Waagmi Group

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to the Waagmi group, consisting of Diène Mbaye Seck, Khady Diouf, Maguette Fall, Birame Sembène, Maïmouna Mbengue, Seynabou Diome, Fatou Baye Dieng, Mame Ngom by Senegal Ecovillage Microfinance Fund in Senegal. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the next 12 months, Senegal Ecovillage Microfinance Fund will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

Waagmi is a group that runs an unusual business: baking bread made with seaweed. Gorgui Faye, the president of the local ecovillage of Ngaparou, along with Seynabou Diome and Khady Diouf, told me how they had got the idea from a friend of theirs who was doing research on seaweed some years ago and found that it could add significant nutritional value to the population's heavily carb-based diet. Since then the group, made up of all women, has been making biscuits and baguettes which are very popular in the community. The women clean, dry, and grind seaweed into strawlike bits, and then add it to the bread they make in their bakery, which is conveniently located right on the beach. I tasted one of the biscuits warm out of the oven -- it was delicious, just like any fresh baked bread, with no change in color or taste. The women also make a powder additive from from seaweed that can be added to milk or fruit juices as a nutritious preservative. This Kiva loan has helped them expand their operations, though not as much as they hoped. With the help of a second loan, they hope to purchase kneading machines to speed up the production process, as they currently knead by hand, although they think a large modern oven is entirely beyond their means. Seynabou and Khady are happy to help provide for their families, since their husbands' fishing and farming work is often insufficient.