YAP Proposal #208: “Dairy Cooperative” (Karake Afrique, Rwanda)

My name is Karake Afrique. I was born in 1983 in Gakenke District of Rwanda. I have bachelor Degree in Agribusness (Ao)

I have started my own dairy cooperative in 2012 after expecting that many farmers produce milk but they lack where to sell them so I collect them and process them.
Another reason is turning into practice what I have learnt from school (agribusiness).

General background of the project
Dairy Cooperative started in 2012 after expecting that in Rwanda, women genocide survivors who owe cows from Girinka (a cow) program supported by His excellence Paul Kagame were missing where to sell the milk produced by their cows. In addition, these women genocide survivors and vulnerable poor people were missing funds to help their children at school while they have cows.

As a person who born in the tragedy event of genocide, I have started running this small business in order to help these genocide survivors by collecting and processing their produced milk in my cooperative named. Currently, I am serving more than 3250 famers and 10 milk collectors who gain money from the cooperative and now they are able to feed their children and obtain school fees for them.

The motivation of the business / its role on whole community?
I started this business in 2012 when I expected that genocide survivors in are struggling with lack of markets for their produced milk from cows own from Girinka program funded by His Excellence Paul Kagame, then after I founded this dairy centre to help these struggling women to collect, process their produced milk and also to sell the processed milk in different markets of Rwanda neighboring countries.

Currently, I am serving 3250 farmers and 10 milk collectors and now they are able to feed their children and obtain school fees for them while before it was like a dream for them to find school fees for their children.

The vision
I am the CEO (Chief Executive Officer) and the founder of my own Cooperative. My important role is to recruit the milk collectors and to look for markets for collected and processed milk in Rwanda and Burundi. In addition,I do fundraising for my business so that I can expand it from local to the national level.

Currently, I am serving 3250 farmers and 10 milk collectors and now they are able to feed their children and obtain school fees for them while before it was like a dream for them to find school fees for their children.

My project vision is to eradicate poverty and hunger among vulnerable and indigenous people through project activities expansion in Rwanda.

Proposed usage of USD 5,000 budget
Once awarded this amount of prize, I will expand my business in the following manner:

1. To increase the milk collectors from 10 to 30 collectors.(50% of the budget)
2. To expand the business centre from 1 to 3 centres (30% of the budget)
3. To buy one good machine for using during milk processing and packaging (20% of the budget)

Blogpost and picture submitted by Karake Afrique (Rwanda) – afrikara2020(at)gmail.com

The content, structure and grammar is at the discretion of the author only.

This post is published as proposal #208 of “YAP” – our “Youth Agripreneur Project”.

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