Expert Opinion

Small-scale efforts, great results! Every month Club Africa speaks to business experts with extensive knowledge of the local business and investment environment in Africa

Practical advice for better business results

Ex-Change links African and western entrepreneurs and professionals

To most Africans, learning how to run a business is far more valuable than aid in euros or dollars. The employees of an industrial bakery in Togo agree wholeheartedly with that statement. So do the cacao farmers in Nganda Tsuni, Congo. And the fruit processors in a factory in Madagascar. Thanks to the expertise of Ex-Change vzw, a non-profit organisation, their businesses took a big leap forward. “Good practical advice from an expert in the same business can make a huge difference”, says Kris Binon of the Ex-Change organisation in Belgium.

The bakery in Togo was facing problems in upgrading production and working more effective and efficiently. Experienced bakers from Belgium travelled to Togo to work on the problem together. In a few weeks time they set up a better structure and scheduling, allowing the bakery to expand its turnover.

Cacao farmers in Congo

A different question came to Ex-Change from cacao farmers in Congo. How could they organise themselves better, resulting in better negotiations and cacao prices? A fruit processing company in Madagascar was looking to improve its production process and better marketing results got stuck. “We get about 300 similar questions from about ten African countries every year”, says Kris Binon of Ex-Change. “Last year we were able to help 180 of them, by sending experts in fields like production, management, agriculture, IT, engineering and marketing. We have a huge database of people that want to share their knowledge and experience in a period of about three weeks.”

Plenty of entrepreneurship

African entrepreneurs that see no solution to a problem sometimes lack the knowledge and experience to – for example – scale up production. “There is plenty of entrepreneurship in Africa. We want to build on this existing enthusiasm, by enabling businesses to take the next step. To grow bigger, better and more profitable. Growth and business profitability can have tremendous leverage power in Africa: it creates jobs for people who can send their kids to school and to learn a trade to have a better life later.”

Careful selection

Ex-Change is working with this proven method of expertise sharing for almost ten years now. “We get results, because we make a careful selection: for a successful project we need motivated entrepreneurs. Ownership. And a reasonable chance that the project will lead to a better situation for the business at hand.” The experts that Ex-Change is sending are equally carefully screened. “We need real experience and a hands-on style of cooperation. In some areas, like in IT, we send out people in their thirties, in most other areas the experts are in their forties and fifties.” There is no shortage of experts. Kris Binon explains: “Most experts find their projects really inspiring experiences.”

Improvements for everybody

Ex-Change has the results to prove that its concept works. The bakery in Togo can now take larger orders without much trouble. The cacao farmers are getting a better price for their product, which is also better in quality. “The buyer welcomed the improvements in organisation, because it delivered product quality improvements that seemed impossible to achieve before the project. And the fruit processing company in Madagascar is doing extremely well: in the first year after the Ex-Change project production went up by 400 per cent!”

Have you volunteered your expertise for small African business through an organisation like Ex-Change before?