Turning trash into Treasure: Mango waste Composting in Burkina Faso

The rising cost of mineral fertilizers, caused by disrupted supply chains, export restrictions and rising commodity prices, has spurred an increasing demand for locally produced alternatives, such as organic fertilizers. Add to this growing concern over soil erosion and reduced soil fertility, and you have an opportunity for agroecological business models within an emerging circular economy. These innovative approaches provide a multi-layered, interlinked response to a threefold challenge:

• Ensuring food security for a growing world population,

• Maintaining healthy ecosystems to safeguard livelihoods within planetary boundaries,

• Building resilience to multidimensional crises.

A recipe for success: Organic compost production

In response to these challenges, the GIZ Global Project “Rural Employment with Focus on Youth” (GP RYE) partnered with the experienced agronomists and economists at “Sense” to develop a sound business model focused on organic compost production.

Freely available organic waste from the industrial processing of various agricultural products – such as mango and cashew- is converted into high-quality compost. This does not only create new jobs but simultaneously solves the waste problem of local companies, creating a circular economy. This way, the quality and quantity of agricultural production is sustainably improved.

Michiel Arnoldus, the Managing Director at Sense, emphasizes the attractiveness of the business model, especially for young people in Burkina Faso. The input cost and investments are low, the demand high and the return on investment quick, with first sales just six weeks after starting the process. This makes the Mango waste compost production a promising business model. The overwhelming interest from more than 50 smallholder cooperatives and processing factories shows its appeal. Especially organic certified processing factories, working with farmers' cooperatives, have a huge interest to supply farmers with consistently high-quality organic fertiliser that is available in sufficient quantities and at a reasonable price. Currently no fertiliser is applied, which means yields decrease over time, and most trees only produce a crop every second year. Meanwhile mango companies are spending money each day for their waste to be collected and disposed in pits in rural areas.

The Training: Building the Business Model

In a first round, over 30 young people from cooperatives, small businesses and processing companies joined a four-day technical course on compost production, and how to run a compost business. Participants were trained on composting techniques, compost recipes and the importance of compost in farming and soil health and fertility. They were also trained in entrepreneurial skills such as sales, cost price calculation, and operational management.

After the initial training participants were linked to a coach who provided further technical training on site. Follow-up trainings then included marketing and sales, financial planning, and internal organisation. This knowledge is crucial for establishing a system for the timely collection of waste, its processing and the sale and distribution of the final compost product. Participants also received additional support to purchase chippers, with costs shared equally between the companies and cooperatives. Finally, they received a training in the safe operation and maintenance of the chippers by a local company, who is also taking care of after sales service.

The Outcome: New Jobs and Compost “Recipes”

Michiel is proud of the project’s visible success. Every composting startup founded by the training participants created around 10 new jobs – over 130 in total – with potential for many more in the future. Initial orders for over 1.000 tonnes of compost highlight the high demand and promising prospect of the business model.

A whole range of recipes has been developed using other waste products that are available in abundance, like chicken manure, cow dung, hibiscus and cotton stalks, cashew shell, rice husk, and maize stover. These recipes allow composting throughout the year.

Overcoming Difficulties: How to tackle challenges

The first challenge in the project was to get people to start making their first compost test pile after the training. There is always a reason not to start, but you have to start somewhere. This required a lot of coaching and support. Another challenge was that bad composting techniques have been promoted for decades are deeply engrained in farmers, existing compost producers and scientists. The result is that expensive poor-quality compost is the norm in Burkina Faso, and participants with previous composting experience tend to fall back on poor techniques, i.e. using compost pits, covering piles with plastic, compacting the pile, not blending ingredients, or turning the pile too late. All these practises lead to poorly decomposed compost void of micro-organisms, and acidic if mango is used.

One last challenge was to deliver the business skills to the participants, particularly the cost of production and sales. Participants are used to technical training, but the economic modules were completely new to them. It took a lot of effort to convince producers that it requires 10 contacts with potential clients to make one sale which is a full-time job for someone in the team.

Related to this is the importance to base your sales price on your cost price, and to manage your costs by keeping the usage of expensive ingredients such as manure low and use free ingredients instead. In working with international experts and commercial composting businesses in Europe and South Africa, Sense found there is no need for the expensive ingredients such as compost starters or lime. As long as your compost recipe is good and you have water and oxygen in your pile, your will have PH neutral compost in 6 weeks. If you have the right recipe, you can produce good compost which you can sell at an affordable price and still make great profit.

Green Business Models for more Employment and Better Income

By linking agroecology with youth employment promotion, systemic approaches like the composting project in Burkina Faso offer multiple benefits in different dimensions. Newly founded start-ups in the food industry and related sectors can expand local value chains and pave the way for a resilient regional economy. These innovative business models address contextual problems and needs, ensuring a diversified agricultural sector that can deal with individual crop failures and price fluctuations of imported goods. Promoting local markets and recycling resources in local circular economies creates additional and secure income opportunities in decent jobs with fair wages.

Michiel is enthusiastic about spreading the compost production business model to other countries and regions. He looks forward to working with other projects and is confident that organic fertiliser production will become a key component in transitioning to an agroecologically oriented food system - both regionally and globally.