Imagine you are an entrepreneur in an African country where over a million people each year are suffering from a deadly but preventable disease - malaria. You have a concept for a product that could help reduce this suffering and create a huge positive social impact. This is the situation where Faso Soap, an innovative social impact entrepreneurship experiment in Burkina Faso, was born.
Social Impact Entrepreneurship refers to the process of creating and implementing innovative solutions to social, cultural, or environmental issues. It's a business model that aims not just for profit, but also for the betterment of society.
Faso Soap is a real-world example of such an innovative model. Conceived by two African innovators, Moctar Dembélé and Gérard Niyondiko, Faso Soap is a soap infused with insect-repelling compounds, designed to repel malaria-spreading mosquitoes, hence reducing the incidence of malaria.
The driving force behind Faso Soap's creation was the need to find a practical, affordable, and locally-sourced solution to combat the high incidences of malaria in Sub-Saharan Africa. The innovative aspect of Faso Soap is that it integrated a social cause (preventing malaria) with a product that is commonly used in every household (soap), thereby creating an everyday solution to a pervasive problem.
Identify a Serious Social Issue: The entrepreneurs recognised malaria as a severe social issue affecting their local communities and decided to address it.
Devise an Innovative Solution: They came up with the concept of a soap infused with an insect-repellent, which is used daily, thus offering routine protection against mosquitoes.
Develop the Product Locally: The formulations for Faso Soap were developed using local resources, which made the production process sustainable.
Promote and Distribute the Soap: The soap was marketed as a day-to-day essential usable by all members of the family and was affordably priced. In other words, Faso soap was not just a health product, but a routine household item.
Resulting Social Impact: By reducing the number of mosquito bites, Faso Soap has contributed to reducing incidences of malaria, thereby creating significant social impact.
Faso Soap exemplifies how innovative social impact entrepreneurship can address critical social issues in sustainable, locally-relevant, and financially viable ways. By focusing on malaria – a pressing problem in their community – the founders of Faso Soap were able to develop an affordable, practical, and impactful solution, demonstrating how innovative entrepreneurship can lead to profound societal betterment.