The African Development Bank (AfDB) has highlighted the importance of digital marketing to start-ups. While using a Senegalese businesswoman as a case study, AfDB noted that digital marketing is key to the success of her luxury tea start-up.
According to the Senegalese businesswoman, Adja Sembene Fall, she had no choice but to launch her start-up business online because her new Contanna fair-trade tea company only had $200 to its name.
“Due to [lack of] finance, it was not possible to get a physical shop. We started out in the backyard of my brother’s house. We sold our teas via social media for three years. Digitizing our buying process was really important. We [were] also able to present and adjust packaging of our product online, [to emphasize] it was premium and different from what was available in Senegal.”
Adja Sembene Fall
Fall noted that her line of luxury brand tea product is about more than taste. Fall added saying, Contanna teas sell a “Senegalese experience” that promotes a women-owned, 100% locally sourced and processed product based on recipes infusing family and cultural traditions.
The Senegalese businesswoman disclosed that its first year of operations, a focus on Instagram and its website drew $5,000 in online sales. “As the online business grew, Contanna hit $12,000 in sales and established a community of around 2,000 clients”.
Adja Sembene Fall recently opened a pop-up stall at Dakar’s Sea Plaza shopping mall. In January, it was named a winner of the African Development Bank’s AgriPitch Competition, which supports African youth agripreneurs by improving their business bankability and ensuring that they are “pitch ready” for potential investors.
AgriPitch Competition
The 2022 AgriPitch competition, which started last October, received nearly 750 complete entries from entrepreneurs in the agriculture sector – or “agripreneurs” from 38 African countries. The judging panel comprised women-led enterprise support advisory firm, Private Equity Support; the Private Financing Advisory Network, a global network of climate and clean energy financing experts; and EldoHub, an education, innovation, and technology organization targeting youth and women.
“We don’t eschew hiring men. The women were first to apply and were qualified. They currently log their work production and stock building in paper books. We are training them to build capacity to use Google Sheets [and other digital software].”
Adja Sembene Fall
The bank noted that Contanna and the two-dozen other competition finalists will retain access to the AgriPitch “deal room” to avail of post-competition digital expertise, business development, and investor engagement.
“We look forward to working closely with the entrepreneurs in the coming months through individual business advisory support and investor engagement in the deal room,” said Diana Gichaga, Managing Partner at Private Equity Support.
Recently, the Board of Directors of the African Development Bank approved a US$7.5 million equity investment in Africa Tech Ventures (ATV) to boost operations of highly scalable companies that use technology to innovate in key sectors such as consumer goods, corporate services, education, logistics, energy, FinTech, agriculture or healthcare.
The equity investment is part of the Boost Africa Investment Program, a joint collaboration between the Bank, the European Commission (EC) and the European Investment Bank (EIB), which has already committed US$10 million to the Fund.
ATV will provide seed investment to early stage companies that improve and facilitate access of essential goods and services to the underserved, effectively promoting inclusive growth.
“Africa is experiencing rapid mobile penetration. This provides huge opportunity to the development of start-ups and small and medium scale enterprises. But, there is a scarce risk capital to venture capital funds targeting early stage businesses,” said Stefan Nalletamby, the Bank’s Director for Financial Sector Development.
