Voices from the project: the OSIRIS project supporting rural informal workers in Senegal.

The organization of informal workers is a core issue within the framework of informal economy. Cooperative structures are a very interesting tool to that end as they contribute to create a bridge between formal and informal economy and to create frameworks of integrated services to strengthen financial, social and health security of informal workers.

Following this approach, the Osiris project, implemented by the NGO ADGembloux, aims at establishing the Cooperative for the Inclusive Development of the Djiolor District (COORDID) in Senegal. 

The objective of the EU-funded OSIRIS project is "To improve the social and economic protection of vulnerable rural populations dependent on the informal economy by deploying an offer of cooperative and mutual services in 8 regions of Senegal".

For this purpose, the project has contributed to the establishment of the Rural Cooperative for Inclusive Development in the district of Djilor (COORDID) that we presented in the latest post on the IESF community of practice.

Here are some testimonies from the local beneficiaries and present their personal stories and relation with the project.

Ibrahima (village of Mbossé), aged 57, is a metal carpenter and producer of millet and peanuts. A member of the cooperative since 2016, Bitéye wanted to access the agricultural inputs that the cooperative distributed to its members. The producers had already expressed their needs without him. Which meant that he could not benefit that year. But had to wait for the next agricultural campaign. He was about to give up as he was approached by the cooperative councillor about the other products and services they provide. In the discussions it came up that, in addition to it agricultural activities, he is also a carpenter, a profession inherited from his father but that this activity is not formalized. The councillor thus supported Ibrahima to obtain a trade register and a NINEA. Ibrahima can now practice both jobs and says: "I understood the importance of having a legal recognition, because if I had the papers I could bid at the launch of the construction market of the cooperative.

Abdoulaye, a young producer, is one of nine young people selected by the cooperative as part of the OSIRIS project for entrepreneurship training. He was trained in project Management, marketing and financial literacy. Thanks to the training and the financing of 100,000 CFA francs he received from the OSIRIS project, he began producing cowpea seeds, planted mango, and some citrus fruits on an area of half an hectare in the field of his father. He harvested and obtained a production of 400 kg of cowpea. The mango and citrus fruits are still young shoots. They have a reserve of land of 3 hectares uncultivated he intends to exploit for market gardening. Today he is confident that “he can make a decent living by staying in the village thanks to agriculture, and calls for young people to believe in themselves and to believe in agriculture”.