2SCALE Thematic Papers Not By Technology and Money Alone | Page 31

12. The long journey
toward sustainable
business relationships:
The case of the sesame
partnership in Mali
By Baba Togola,
partnership
facilitator, Mali
Key themes: PO development, PO-Firm relationship, Sustainability of coaching services
Sesame-Mali PPP Summary
PROSEMA leads the
sesame export market
in Mali and is the lead
firm of the partnerships,
aiming at strengthening
networks of sourcing
raw material from small-
holder producers. Improving loyalty is not a one-shot process, neither is it
a one-sided one. Loyalty is a matter of reciprocity as this
story explains, from the author’s perspective as facilitator
of the sesame partnership in Mali. The PROSEMA CEO,
Soumaïla Coulibaly, has understood that he needs to
partner with smallholder farmers and decentralise services
to make his business profitable and sustainable. He
organised a network of collectors to buy the sesame from
the farmers. But more was needed to get their loyalty. This
story explains how mutual trust and loyalty comes only
after investing in relationships, decentralising decision-
making and in empowering activities.
Soungo Diarra is one of the farmer leaders involved in col-
lecting sesame to supply the company PROSEMA. During
the commercialisation campaign of 2015, he collected 145
tonnes of sesame from local sesame growers, members of
the network he built up over the years. Today, this network
covers some 20 villages each counting about 25 producers.
At the end of 2016, the group formed a cooperative and
signed its first “win-win” contract with PROSEMA to sup-
ply sesame. With the support of 2SCALE, about ten other
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similar producers’ organisations have been set up and
are spread over various sesame production areas in Mali.
These collectively constitute the basic sesame supply chain
to PROSEMA. Based in the city of Fana, Soumaïla Couli-
baly, the Chief Executive Officer of PROSEMA and initiator
of this development, should feel proud to have successfully
established such a system, thus solving the problem of
attracting a sustainable supply of sesame to his processing
unit in Fana.