“There is so much to do in Mali that people leave their country, where the market is saturated, to come and take our millions here”, says Akim Soul about many companies created by foreigners based in Mali. This 24-year-old lively young created Akim Soul Agency, a public relations and event agency, almost two years ago. “The problem is that even if you have the potential, it does not help you. Because Malians are not considered dynamic “, adds Bessiba Raïssa Dakouo, who launched a month ago a gastronomic critique blog.
On Saturday, March 18, somewhere inside Bamako National Park, these young entrepreneurs evolving, in communication and fashion, in event management, have arranged to exchange about their respective activities, but also to “merge our energies so that our lamps do not go out before they even light up “, says Akim Soul of his real name “Ibrahim Guindo”. They are part of these young people for whom entrepreneurship is one of the few remedies available to the issue of youth employment and a miracle solution to development problems. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the rate of non-employment of young people is 11.3% (2015) in Mali.
Insufficient efforts
Yet, since early 2000, many institutions and programs – including the Ministry of Youth Employment, APEJ, ANPE – have been set up in Mali to address the issue of ” Youth Employment “. The first program, the National Agency for the Promotion of Youth Employment (APEJ), trains and supports young project owners.
On January 1, 2015, another initiative was launched by the government in collaboration with the World Bank: the Youth Skills Development and Employment Project (PROCEJ). This project aims to promote young entrepreneurship. In contrast to the first aspect which deals with education for employment, in particular by creating agro-food, cold and conservation, construction, leather, agricultural mechanics in vocational training institutes, the second promotes entrepreneurship for school drop outs and out-of-school youth in areas such as gardening, crafts, etc.
According to Drissa Ballo, Coordinator of Procej, there were 70,000 candidates, 10,000 of whom were selected. In the end, out of the 10,000, 3,600 young people were selected and received a grant of 300,000 CFA francs in addition to the possibility of benefiting from a credit of up to 1,200,000 CFA francs. There is also a competition of business plans for young graduates. “It must be acknowledged that the State is making efforts but it is not enough to absorb all this mass of young people, about 300 000, who arrive every year on the job market, and without qualification for the most part. “He said.
For Cheikh Amadou Diagana, the creation of these structures and projects dedicated to the promotion of young entrepreneurship is a good step. But, he continues, the key sectors in Mali being agriculture, livestock, education, health, these institutions should be dedicated to development. “We are hungry, ill, bad-trained. Our problem is education. Companies are short of collaborators. It is true that these institutions are everywhere, but do they meet our needs? In reality, they are liars. There will be nothing. Everything we have, will have been created, sought “.
The weaknesses of the approaches
The economist and former diplomat who runs the Sènè Center, Abdoulaye Niang, known for his clear positions on economic issues, is critical: “The international engineering that brought this young entrepreneurial model is in automatic steering in relation to the real problem posed for the creation of global growth. Despite everything they said, we go from one crisis to another. It is aggravation. Alternatives to existing policies need to be found. This can only be found when we have a better understanding of the root causes of the crisis, which is actually social “.
He adds: “The structures dedicated to the promotion of entrepreneurship that they have created are part of an automatic steering model. Because the fundamental problem is that entrepreneurship is a reserved domain, not to you national or regional (African) economic agents but to those in multinational companies. And these multinational companies are generally those that are registered on the global financial market, which have access to investment credit and which therefore cause the movement of the investment capital of industries, managers, engineers and skilled workers to move towards a locality community where you find yourself to further develop its capacity to produce wealth and jobs of multinationals investors also registered in tax havens.
According to the figures of the Entrepreneurship Club of Mali (CEMA), 95% of companies created disappear after three years “because of the lack of supervision, networking, access to the market and because of the weight of the taxation “, explains Cheik Oumar Soumano, general manager of the club. From March 25 to 26, the club, in partnership with the Mali National Employers’ Council (CNPM), the West African Entrepreneurs’ Network (WESP), organized the Economic Forum for Young Entrepreneurs (FEJE) . The aim, explains Soumano, is to discuss the problems faced by young entrepreneurs and set up a network called “Young Entrepreneurs Network of Mali “. During the forum, there will be panels entitled “innovative financing ” (business angels, crowdfunding, love money), ” business taxation “, “youth entrepreneurs supervision “, ” corporate social responsibility”.
For Etienne Fakaba, economist and director of the Mali Center for Research and Political and Economic Analysis, these forums will not bring much change, as there were many others before: ” It is not this which is necessary for youth unemployment. The problems are known to all. Training is not adapted, young people who are lucky to go abroad do not have access to financing on their return because of the interest rate on credit, administrative burden, taxation. There is no supervision and accompaniment of the State “, says the one who is now the advisor in charge of economic affairs at the Presidency.
He also proposes the elimination of structures such as APEJ, ANPE, which, according to him, “cost enormous budgets for a mediocre result “, in order to create incubation centers in the regions to allow young people to train on the spot and a public investments bank.
“Everyone has their point of view but I think we should change approach, replies Sheikh Oumar Soumano. We need companies to get out of the informal sector, we have to rethink the burden of taxation, let companies get access to the market instead of giving them money. The missions of these structures must be rethought. These are tools created before the crisis and, since then, realities have changed. ” For his part, he proposes the creation of a bonus to the loss of employment, to review the heavy funding mechanism that does not meet the needs of young entrepreneurs as well as the bid bond. ” Also, employment promotion structures should therefore focus more on raising awareness, creating an integration unit in universities, working with the human resources department to identify profiles that are not on the market, and create entrepreneurship training branches.
The State must do more
” We need to meet, to net-work, to share, as long as it is not politicized “, says Cheikh Amadou Diagana about the Economic Forum of young entrepreneurs. He is one of the young entrepreneurs gathered at the National Park. This young Senegalese, barely twenty, has lived in Mali for a year and created the communication agency Cat Digital, which is his second start-up. At the CREATEAM incubator, located in Badalabougou where we met him, he works with young people on their project. For him, although Mali is full of potentialities, it is nonetheless true that it lags behind other countries like Senegal, Kenya, notably in terms of access to the Internet, electricity.
One way of to call out to the State, which he confesses, he does not like to speak: ” I can not stand the State. We do not ask him to give money, but to clean up the environment, to give us security, our discharge, internet, electricity. Here, the State does not make the effort to clean up the environment. It does not move enough. The State exasperates me “. He noted that an entrepreneur in the field of e-commerce, for example, can not place on his site the system of payment online: no bank in Mali is registered with PayPal. It must be said that the issue of funding remains a pebble in the shoes of young entrepreneurs.
Mr. Diagana can not be more clear: “Banks, project promoters, institutions are all liars. Here, banks are commercial, they want to make money, make a return on investment and demand a strong cash, a guarantee. The promoters have to stop going to the banks “. But it’s not just that. He also notes that the business environment is different in Mali. ” Everything happens through the network: I know such, who knows such, who knows such. “, he laments. ” We have to tell the truth to young people. The entrepreneur is a behavior. The truth is that it’s sleepless nights, stress, doubt. The difference between entrepreneurs is the mastery of the field. It is a long, difficult process, which requires a lot of financial but also moral support “, concludes Diagana.
Boubacar Sangaré