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Florence Bassono never planned on running a factory. In 2010 the trained executive assistant learned her company might close; rather than wait, she borrowed a small start-up loan, cleared her backyard and began hand-grating cassava in her backyard to make attiéké, the fermented couscous traditionally imported from Côte d’Ivoire. What started as a scramble for a fallback income became an obsession: if Burkina could grow the roots, why should the value, and women’s jobs, be shipped in from abroad? Neighbours laughed at “office hands” turned root peeler, until demand outran supply.
Success brought fresh problems: middlemen controlled raw roots and women processors earned pennies. Bassono chose vertical integration, organizing 150 smallholder suppliers, most of them women, and teaching them climate-smart planting so yields rose along with loyalty. She formalized backyard teams into a micro-factory on Ouagadougou’s fringe, where 70% of the staff are women learning food-safety protocols alongside pay-slip maths.
The AGRA Catalyst
When AGRA’s VALUE4HER Women-to-Women Supply-Chain Innovation Grant opened its first call for proposals in mid-2021, offering up to US $10,000 to projects that deepen commercial links among women-led agribusinesses, Bassono’s pitch was simple but bold: install a food-grade press and solar dryer, then organize an all-female chain – from cassava growers to paste processors to wholesale buyers, under fair-price contracts. Her proposal won. The funds paid for the press, a 48-tray solar dryer and bulk woven sacks. Danish aid program PCESA added managerial coaching.
Within six months, 200 women paste-processors were formally onboarded and trained, 150 smallholder growers secured contracts pegged above local market prices, daily throughput jumped 30%, and peel waste fell because dryer heat converted residues into probiotic livestock feed. Factory staff climbed from 15 to 25, 70% of them women. By 2023 Faso Attiéké couscous was supplying city supermarkets instead of roadside kiosks, proof that a targeted women-to-women grant can flip an informal hustle into a structured value chain.
In addition, Florence consistently applied for the VALUE4HER Women Agripreneurs of the Year Awards (WAYA) in 2022 and 2023. In 2023, she did not manage to be shortlisted as a finalist but VALUE4HER, seeing potential in her, routed her into the FAO–IAFN Women Mentorship Accelerator, pairing her with a leading woman agribusiness mentor to sharpen her strategy, leadership and market scale potential. For Florence, that mentorship was a turning point, not a consolation prize. It allowed her to reframe how she thought about growth, investment and operational excellence. Florence took the coaching to heart. She realized that without HACCP certification, supermarket buyers would never take her calls.
So when the 2024 WAYA call opened, she applied a third time, proposal fine-tuned by months of mentor feedback. This time, the judges were convinced: Florence emerged as the category winner for Outstanding Value-Adding Agripreneur of the Year. The category honors women-owned agribusinesses that have demonstrated excellence in value addition within the agricultural value chain. The focus is on businesses that transform raw agricultural products into higher-value goods, whether through processing, packaging or introducing innovative products that significantly contribute to market growth. The award came with USD 25,000 in prize funds, an extended mentorship journey, and a public platform to showcase her work. For Florence, this wasn’t just validation, it was capital for acceleration.
Within months of receiving the award, Faso Attiéké expanded its capacity and reach. The prize money helped her secure a more streamlined factory space and a solar-powered cassava drying system, which cut drying time from 4.5 hours to just 2 hours. This simple upgrade drastically reduced production delays and improved hygiene, helping her maintain supply contracts with major supermarkets like Lafi, Yelhy, Sank Business, and Faso Market.
The impact on people was just as real. 76 of her 88 employees are women, many of them mothers who previously juggled informal jobs to make ends meet. With WAYA funding, Florence brought on 12 additional staff members, six of them youth under 35. She also formalized mentorship relationships with 13 women-led micro-enterprises in her supply chain, creating a ripple effect of support and leadership.
At the farmer level, the company integrated 83 more cassava producers, all of whom now receive training in organic composting, pest control and water-efficient irrigation. These weren’t just numbers, they were lives moved closer to security. Florence’s team distributed 2.6 tons of biofertilizer made from previously wasted cassava peels and trained all her partner producers on good agricultural practices, with 57% reporting yield improvements by April 2025. Because the new capacity demanded steadier raw-root supply, Florence formalized contracts with 3,000 cassava growers (around 60% of them women), offering a guaranteed price and on-time payment that local middlemen rarely matched. Financially the picture steadied rather than soared: annual turnover held near the previous year’s US $408,000, but the leaner layout and solar drying stripped waste and nudged profit margins a solid 12% higher. Even the peelings found purpose, fermented into a probiotic livestock mash that brings in a modest second income stream and removes a disposal headache.
In December 2024, as production ramped up, Florence faced a different bottleneck: social resistance. Some husbands balked at wives working factory hours. She was able to organize the Faso Attiéké Husband’s Day, a day during which she sensitized husbands to support their wives in entrepreneurship, with a view to their empowerment. It was attended by 27 husbands, with the cultural mood shifting drastically and the resistance significantly eased.
Florence is realistic about what comes next: HACCP sign-off, a first national supermarket rollout, and perhaps, if a pending FAO working-capital grant lands, output of ten tonnes a month by 2026. Still, she keeps the framed WAYA certificate in her office because it reminds her that persistence, not perfection, unlocked the door.