Development Projects within the G50s: Palm Oil production by Bogorwa Gr2/Nyanza-Lac

Bogorwa Gr2 is a G50 located in the small town center of Nyanza-Lac Commune in Makamba Province. This province is among the new provinces where the G50 approach was recently launched. The members were excited when they were sensitized about G50s. They quickly decided to join forces in pursuit of their own development.

This particular group of Bogorwa Gr2 is essentially made of small traders. They gathered in the G50 and got to know each other better. They decided to invest altogether in palm oil production since the region of Nyanza-Lac is full of palm trees.

Dieudonné Niyomwungere, their group leader explained that when the group started meeting up, they placed common business activities as a top priority for the group. “We started saving every week and within a few months we had already gathered 2 million Burundian francs. Some group members invested more money and we reached an amount of 5million BIF. It is with that amount that we kicked off the palm oil production project”

Palm oil production requires a lot of means especially when it comes to machinery. Fortunately, for Bogorwa Gr2, one of the group members had already a mill for palm seeds. He gave a good price to his fellow group members whenever they want to grind the palm seeds. He also allow them to bring the palm seeds at his working place to be dried over there free.

This group is well organized. The members rotate in doing different activities around the palm oil production. Some are in charge of buying palm seeds, others are in charge of drying them and the rest rotate in going to the production site, where the mill is. They go there to work on the oil production and sell the products.

In the future, they plan to gather more means and buy their own mill to produce more oil and soap.