Announcing exciting new partnership to grow agribusinesses in Africa

SCOPEinsight is proud to announce that Velior Développement (Velior Dev.) is the newest member of our Local Expert Network. This partnership will bring essential BDS services in a data-led way to agribusinesses throughout francophone Africa enabling them to access finance and markets. The combination of Velior Dev.’s expertise in strengthening the business operations of agribusinesses and farming organizations alongside SCOPEinsight’s data-driven skills will provide the scaling needed to boost local economies.

Velior Dev., a leader in African agribusiness and market development

Velior Dev. is a consultancy firm based in Côte d’Ivoire and founded in 2016 by Désiré D. Bankole. They are an expert in private sector development. Operating throughout francophone Africa (e.g. Congo Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Benin Republic, and Niger), Velior Dev. helps SMEs, agribusinesses, and farmer organizations become more competitive and sustainable businesses. Their work has attracted clients such as Cargill, CGECI (the leading Ivorian employers’ association), IDH, the IFC, and the World Bank.

Founder Désiré D. Bankole is a leader in agribusiness development with a long history of achieving results in this field. He founded and led IDEA (Investment & Development in Africa), a company focused on the growth of SMEs in Africa and later managed TechnoServe operations in Côte d’Ivoire as the Country Director, where he helped entrepreneurs and guided economic development. He founded Velior Dev. to address a need for market-based advisory services for entrepreneurs and farmer organizations, as well as to help governments create the proper business climates to achieve success.

Velior Dev.’s Expertise

A graphic showing Velior's expertise. They can develop sound and bankable business plans and growth projects. They can increase access to finance with adapted instruments in cooperation with investment institutions and donors. They can help with access to markets and technologies to enable scaling up and growth. They can provide management and leadership advisory services that focus on producing results and impact. They can provide training and coaching that provide long term economic and social success.

Our history of working together to make agribusinesses bankable

SCOPEinsight and Velior Dev. have worked together in the past to help develop cocoa cooperatives in Côte d’Ivoire. For the IDH-led Cocoa Challenge Fund Scale project, Velior Dev. conducted over 300 assessments and reassessments for the cooperatives. The baseline assessment was used to develop targeted training and provide business development services for cooperatives so they could become bankable. The results from the baseline and end-line demonstrated an improvement in seven of the eight dimensions measured^[1]. The professionalism scores of these cooperatives were even more impressive when benchmarked alongside similar cooperatives regionally.

In their work with the FCIP (Farm & Coop Investment Program), Velior Dev. also used SCOPEinsight evaluations as a basis to develop initiatives for increased sustainability in Ivorian cooperatives. Many of these cooperatives were also linked with financial organizations and market-players such as Cargill. A study conducted by Velior Dev. last year showed that more professionalized cooperatives have fewer difficulties accessing finance. The number of cooperatives found to be professional based on the assessments more than tripled between the initial round in 2018 and the most recent round in 2020, thanks to the targeted technical assistance they received.

Combining local expertise and SCOPE methodologies

The LEN is a partnership program that – on the one hand, creates value for market players and capacity builders in target countries and – on the other hand, creates value for local businesses. Through the LEN, we attract organizations that share our vision of professionalizing agribusinesses and serve as reliable SCOPE tool implementors. These experts are the much-needed local infrastructure with the capacity to provide ongoing business development support to agribusinesses well beyond donor-funded initiatives. Through partnering with like-minded businesses (Local Experts), we ensure that international capacity builders can efficiently implement their projects while strengthening the local economy.

A bright future of combined impact

We at SCOPEinsight are excited to continue our history of working with Velior Dev. to strengthen francophone African agribusinesses so that they are better connected to markets and can more effectively access finance. Market-led BDS services in Africa are essential if we want to see sector growth. Therefore our relationship with Velior Dev. is central to this goal.

SCOPEinsight stands by Velior Dev.’s commitment to providing inclusive and sustainable solutions for development in the African private sector, and we are proud to welcome them as a new member of our Local Expert Network.

^[1]_{SCOPEinsight measures eight dimensions of business professionalism. These are internal management, financial management, sustainability, operations, production base, market, external risks, and enabling environment. The dimension which did not improve was the market dimension, and this was due to externalities affecting the cocoa sector in Côte d’Ivoire.}

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