Award for the Entrepreneurship – 2012

Senegal

La Compagnie du Bien Manger

Tags: food, local food, cuisine, gastronomy, diets/dietetics, health, creativity, sickness, taste, added value, culture, good eating.

Saly Wade: Cuisine to reconcile identity, gastronomy and the health. Saly Wade experienced great problems of health and decided to work on her lifestyle deep up to her daily consumptions: she decided to prepare her own food. Saly teaches at the University Cheik Anta Diop de Dakar as Geographer. She suggests to promote the value of food intakes and the act of good eating. She suggests local cuisine and gastronomics together with dietetics with the role therapy (dietotherapy) and art. Open to the World and integrated to changes in relation with socio-economics, the model of Saly promotes local products. We have an excellent way to prevent non transmissible diseases as they are now common in big cities before they go to rural areas, she says in an interview. Looking at our feeding behavior grows is for Saly Wade an indication of regular changes in social transformations. Saly Wade talks therefore of identity and culture where Africa could emerge within its uniqueness.

Problem: The rapid increase of urbanization goes with changes at the large scale. Although the life standards have increased in Senegal, food consumption is still unbalanced in many families. One sees a paradox going from malnutrition to obesity with the consequences that we know in non transmissible diseases. With the influence of the medias which describe an imaginary modern way of good eating the reality is that many people suffer from an increase in non transmissible diseases. We are what we eat and we are what our cultures tell us to be. Saly is busy preparing a model of cuisine for understanding the development of the senegalese way of cooking. She suggests a new culture of good eating for well being as a reliable indication that Africa has good and strong values.

Action: Saly has people with experience around to support her initiative. And these people are ready to respond to the pressing question of good eating. Depending on the situation, there is a chef cook, a nutritionist, a psychologist, a physician and a specialist of communication. Altogether, these people form the Company for Good Eating. Ahead before public shows, all products are tested: diagnosis, follow up of events, formula for traitor for exceptional events, providing good meals for enterprises, workshop for dietetics and gastronomy, demonstrations, etc. Conferences and or debates are always followed by some actions for tasting food. Communication about good eating is a value which characterizes a society; therefore, training kids for good eating should start at their young age.

Harubuntu Dimension: Saly combines creativity and commitment. She goes deep in the needs of people stimulating them to express their feelings. She struggles to win a fight which has become a global concern. For her, good eating should be easy and accessible to every person. Being on the table to eat should no more be a nightmares for people suffering from non transmissible diseases; it should an opportunity for celebration, in contrary. Eating is an act for sharing and it is an act to preserve good health conditions. Every person should participate in improving the good eating as a social act with is linked to local development. Following the philosophy of the Association Plus Value Culture in partnership with the Compagnie du Bien Manger, "the more culture we invest in our endeavors, the more values we get in our products". If this approach is well understood we can then agree that creating the conditions for good production goes with our identity.

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