Burundi businesses benefit from local business expertise
Fiona Bruce MP led a new business initiative to Burundi in Africa recently. A team of six hand picked business specialists, including local accountant Adrian Veale of Mitten Clarke Chartered Accountants, volunteered as part of Project Umubano which has been working in Rwanda and Sierra Leone for the past 7 years. The word ‘Umubano’ means working together. Over those years, in the business development section of the project, devised by Fiona Bruce MP, nearly 1000 businesses in Rwanda have received training in all aspects of business, in some cases leading directly to accessing finance to expand or start their businesses in a country with very high unemployment and poverty.
The Prime Minster, David Cameron, who initiated the Project Umubano in Rwanda 7 years ago, specifically requested the Project visit a new country this year, and Burundi was chosen as it was in the bottom 5% of poorest countries in the world.
Over 4 days, businesses including a soap manufacturer employing some 1000 people, bottled water manufacturers, IT specialists, and many others received specialist training in business skills, finance and marketing, and on the final day 2 TV crews and a radio station turned up and the Project was heavily featured on the national news all over Burundi.
Wenceslas Bagona, one of the delegates sent these words to us. 'It is a very big pleasure for me to have met such wonderful men and women from Europe and especially to learn a lot from them. We are eagerly and impatiently waiting for you to come back.' Emmanuel Gahungu wrote 'the training was very important for me and the business of producing drinking water and I hope relations will continue.'
Talking of his experiences in Burundi, Adrian commented “it was incredible to receive such a warm welcome in this part of East Africa. Burundi wasn't a country I knew much about, but now I'm really hoping I get the opportunity to return to help the businesses there grow and employ more people. This is a country desperately in need of investment from Europe and has a great desire to trade with the western world.”
Aside from business training and visiting local businesses, banks and the Burundi Chamber of Commerce, Fiona, Adrian and the team also managed to see a family of hippos in Lake Tanganyika which the capital Bujumbura is on the shores of, and joined a group of drummers to show how much they lacked the rhythm of the locals!
Fiona Bruce MP commented
“It was both enjoyable and rewarding to work with local accountant Adrian Veale on a pioneering new aid project in Burundi, a country with so much need. Helping businesses to grow in a developing country is an important element of job creation, community stability, and ultimately potentially much needed tax revenue which is an essential step to help a developing county move out of aid dependency”.
“What Project Umubano shows is that not only medics and teachers have something to offer in terms of aid work, but that everyone – even business people! – can make an important contribution in supporting some of the most neediest communities on earth. It is a tremendous privilege to work with like minded and enthusiastic volunteers such as Adrian and we hope that this first visit to Burundi will be followed by many more. For me it is particularly exciting that Adrian first read about Project Umubano through an article in the Congleton Chronicle.”
