Breaking ground as a new kind of entrepreneur
Social outcast. Determined fighter. Successful businesswoman. It’s been an incredible journey for Edabié Charlotte Kanzar.
Edabié experienced extreme poverty throughout her youth in rural Burkina Faso. “No money to buy the soap. No money to buy clothes,” she recounts. Other villagers taunted her for her poor hygiene and ragged clothes. Married while still a girl, she heard mocking voices call out “goat-wife,” alluding to the smell of a goat.
She bore four children in quick succession. And then her husband moved to neighboring Ivory Coast, leaving her to fend for herself and their children.
Desperate for help, Edabié decided to join a local women’s savings group. The group works with Grameen Foundation and our local partner to deliver financial and agricultural training, and to enable each group to set up a digital savings account. In this impoverished region, only one woman in each group needs to own a mobile phone in order for all the group members to benefit from access to secure savings and reliable loans.
Once Edabié became a group member, she slowly began to build her business with those loans. Meanwhile, the group agricultural training enabled her to increase her production and sale of cowpeas, a climate-hardy and nutritious crop, and to begin poultry farming.
She used the small profits to expand her farm. Soon she could also afford hygiene products, healthier food and new clothes. She began to focus on bigger plans. She reunited with her husband and together they opened a restaurant and two small shops.
Her success has inspired other women in her village and even earned her the 2018 “Model Woman” award from the Burkina Faso Ministry of Agriculture and Hydraulic Facilities.
Edabié’s is proud of her journey, and there's much more she hopes to do for her family and community. Her greatest joy is giving her children the opportunities she never had.
Be part of her breakthrough.