Creating jobs in the
Senegal River Valley

Established in 2004, CGER offers a variety of business management services for producer organisations and rural businesses in the Senegal River Valley.  

Initially set up to support producers seeking to improve their bookkeeping, the CGER now serves more than 500 clients representing over 12,000 businesses and has three management centres and a coordination centre called CGER Vallée. ‘Producers were facing a range of issues, especially in the areas of good governance and accounting in their organisations,’ explains Assane Kane, director of CGER Vallée. ‘They were keeping their accounts in school exercise books, where they noted down bits of information. It was not proper bookkeeping. Then, come the end of the crop year, they weren’t able to present their organisations’ accounts in a transparent way.’ This represents a major obstacle to their securing the funding they need for future growing seasons. 

CGER’s mission to deliver a combination of technical and financial advice makes it unique in the West African farming sector. However, it still faces challenges in its day-to-day work. For instance, the accounting and financial documents that CGER produces are not yet recognised in the business sector of the Senegal River Valley. Therefore, financial institutions still sometimes refuse to accept CGER-produced documents as the basis for their decisions on loan applications. 

With support from Invest for Jobs, CGER has built its capacities, diversified and developed its service and consultancy offerings and expanded its client portfolio to include new sectors, such as livestock rearing. These new and improved services help support the activities of producer organisations and local businesses and, in so doing, create jobs in this rural region of Senegal.  

In February 2021, Invest for Jobs rolled out a two-pronged support scheme comprising financial assistance and technical support, the latter provided by the French non-profit accounting and consultancy network Cerfrance and focused on improving the services that CGER offers to its clients. As a result of this support, CGER now provides its clients with management training that seeks to build their capacities in this area.  

The project also aims to support the digital transformation of CGER’s functions. ‘Today, it is our view that CGER could become much more effective by using new technologies,’ Kane emphasises. As part of this project, all of CGER’s computer equipment has been replaced. The work under way to digitise CGER’s activities ill, in particular, enable the Centre to better manage its member organisations, considerably improve the productivity of its consultants and accountants and deliver better internal communication. 

By improving management practices that contribute to the revival of economic activities in the region, the support provided to CGER by Invest for Jobs ultimately lead to the creation of 2,461 good jobs until June 2025. Through the project 348 people have been trained and the working conditions of 757 employees working for the Centre’s client organisations have been improved.