Fayelle Ouane (MBA 2009) founded Suguba to create transformative change on the African continent. In this interview, she discusses the path to achieving that deep impact.

“So I'm originally from Mali, but I grew up in Switzerland. And I was extremely fortunate to have access to the best schools. And I've always grown up with the strong guiding principle that to whom much is given, much is expected. So specifically with Suguba, what we want to do is to develop strong entrepreneurial ecosystems across francophone Africa through the setup of startup incubators. The second one is to foster regional trade and regional integration by facilitating connections between entrepreneurs from the various countries and also helping them expand more easily to other markets.

“And the third priority at Suguba is really to enhance and promote the ‘Made in Mali, Senegal, Cote d'Ivoire’ innovations that we're actually producing. At Suguba, we've been very fortunate to assist over 100 entrepreneurs across the three countries—Senegal, Mali, and Cote d'Ivoire—in launching, developing, and growing their businesses. The great majority of those businesses are still operating. They've created, jointly, over 100 jobs. Many of them, specifically in Senegal, have been able to raise funding both from the public sector and also from private investors, angel investors, and VC investors.

“Now, when you look at the private sector on the continent, you see that especially in the formal side of the formal sector, it's dominated by male businessmen, basically. We know that Africa actually has the highest participation, the highest percentage of women business owners and business leaders across the world. However, when you look at this into a little bit more detail, you realize that the majority of women business owners are working in the informal sector.

“So this, for us, represents an untapped opportunity. And we believe that by equipping those women entrepreneurs with the right skills, the right know-how, the right networks, we will enable them to actually formalize their businesses to create employment, to create wealth for themselves, and for their communities, and their families. When a woman makes $1, about 90% of their income is spent on health, education and nutrition. And that same statistic for a man is only about 35%.

“We have an imperative to really invest in women if we want to see a different Africa, and a transformed Africa, and an Africa that performs better, and that surely rises in every sense of the term. One of the reasons I decided to come to HBS was the strong emphasis on the case method. And for me, the main thing that I took out of it was really the ability to ask the right questions to make sure that you can get to the answer and to the solution that you're looking for.

“I think it's really this ability to hone in on the core issue that you're trying to address by asking the right question, by being curious, by being very investigative, by also collecting data analysis and making sure that you make choices that are as informed as possible. This is what really is helping us now make Suguba as successful as possible—hopefully through our impact on entrepreneurs both women and young across the continent.”

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