EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Pésinet, a non-profit organization focused on preventative health care, and Saint Louis Net, S.A.R.L., a for-profit business that intends to offer a range of IT-based services to the community, are social development-focused enterprises operating in Saint Louis, Senegal. Both are entities of Afrique Initiatives, a Brussels-based company focused on investing in small business development in Africa. Both activities operate in Saint Louis, a city of about 150,000 in northern Senegal, and share an Intranet site and related IT infrastructure provided by Afrique Initiatives. Both also have a social purpose, but have evolved different operating models.

BUSINESS MODEL
Pésinet provides preventative healthcare services for children up to five years of age from low-income households in the city of Saint Louis. The service weighs children in their homes two times per week, using local trained members of the community, and then tracks and monitors changes in the children’s weight over an Intranet with the help of private doctors. It also arranges for follow-up care by doctors when necessary for the children’s continued good health. Pésinet charges a nominal monthly fee, averaging less than 150 CFA (US $0.26) per child, for each child enrolled in the service; the fee also includes the cost of any necessary doctor’s visits. The fee provides some revenue, but the majority of the operating costs of the service, which currently reaches about 1,400 children in eight districts of Saint Louis, are covered by Afrique Initiatives. The number of children Pésinet serves is growing the program hopes to expand its service area in the future.

Saint Louis Net is a for-profit business owned by Afrique Initiatives and Abdou Karim Dieng, a local entrepreneur. Through an Intranet site, Saint Louis Net plans to promote five products to the Saint Louis community: job search services, classified ads for local goods and services, safety-related weather forecasts and marine information for the extensive Saint Louis fishing community, and e-government services. The company plans to deliver these services via a franchise network of telecenters drawn from the roughly 300 such facilities already operating throughout the city. Saint Louis Net has basic computer and Internet services operating in its initial telecenter, franchise agreements in place with two additional telecenters, and a completed Intranet site. However, Saint Louis Net’s prospective products have not been realized as yet, and appear to need more research and further development before becoming viable businesses. The company’s goal of achieving self-sustainability by its target date of December, 2003, does not appear realistic.

Both activities rely on basic telephone service and Internet access and use an Intranet site created, designed, and currently maintained by Afrique Initiatives. Back-end database services are also provided by Afrique Initiatives.

DEVELOPMENT BENEFIT
Pésinet’s goal is to provide preventative healthcare to low-income children in the target age group, reaching the greatest number possible during the critical period of childhood development. The service, although growing, now reaches about 8% of below-five year-old children in the Saint Louis region. While tracking weight changes is a very basic healthcare service, it seems to be effective at identifying a number of illnesses, from malnutrition to malaria, and enabling timely medical intervention. Each month, approximately 20% of the children tracked in the first third of 2003 required consultations with doctors. Pésinet’s weighing agents provide a thorough service to the communities they cover, helping to educate families on the benefits of prevention and motivating mothers to seek medical care when a child looks ill. Moreover, the service’s focus on prevention may prove to be a very cost-effective approach for improving public health.

Many of Saint Louis Net’s proposed products might tangibly benefit the community, but it is not yet possible to evaluate their viability or impact.


KEY LESSONS
Pésinet’s model appears to be successful, but it is a non-profit enterprise that will require continued support, as it is not intended to be self-sustainable. Saint Louis Net and some of its proposed services or products could become sustainable, but it is not yet successfully delivering social benefits and faces a number of business challenges, including the difficulties of managing a joint venture when the operating partner has other, potentially distracting, business activities. For the two organizations to share IT infrastructure is a novel and possibly useful approach, but may only be viable when that infrastructure is provided by a third party, such as Afrique Initiatives in this case. The results in Senegal so far also reflect the difficulty of starting a successful enterprise when the initiative comes from an external source, rather than from local entrepreneurs.

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