#MEET Na-U-Next Salone Mobile Retail Truck

#MEET Na-U-Next Salone Mobile Retail Truck

This is a short interview we conducted with  Nyanje Konneh, the creator of Na-U-Next Salone Mobile Retail Truck. If you like this project and would like to vote for it, click here.

---

1. Please, tell us a bit about yourself: where are you from and what is your background?

I am Nyanje Konneh, an innovative young Sierra Leonean entrepreneur with 5 years of experience managing all aspects of retail function. From distribution to marketing. Currently, I run a small grocery shop in Freetown and I am very passionate to solve social problems with my community with the little entrepreneur skills I have. This is my passion and thus all my energy is dedicated toward it.

2. Can you describe your idea or project in two sentences?

The main objective of Na-U-Next is to provide food security and nutrition related information to low-income households with priority access to low-cost staple food, purchased centrally, at a better price and guaranteed quality control. Furthermore, a system of personal cards allows the accumulation of sums to be used in case of financial shocks.

3. How did you get your idea or concept?

Na-U-Next Salone is a mobile staple Food Truck business that sells a basket of staple foods to low-income households with income less than a dollar per day.
The concept o the mobile retail truck was born in 2014 during the Ebola virus outbreak in the country and food security skyrocketed more than before. As a measure to control the spread of the epidemic spread, authorities prohibited all trading activities throughout the country (e.g. opening to shops to the general public). In addition, many productive labor activities were either closed down by authorities or simply abandoned by family heads, such a situation only brought suffering especially to the low-income household.
As a shop owner and entrepreneur, I needed to figure out how to sell my stocks in the shop and at the same time help with the food security problems in my community. Since the authorities had only allocated one day in a week for trading activities. What immediately to came mind was an innovative and means to make effective use of the trading day, hence the concept of mobile retail. With this concept, I was able to easily sell all products that were either near the expiration date or easily perishable over time.
To manage the process, we employed the Community Business Correspondents (CBCs) concept as a strategy to save cost and time in reaching the customer. With this strategy, the CBCs will investigate customers/ households in their various community who want to buy staple food and groceries, list the product they need, the information is then sent to us by text or call for onward delivery.
Immediately after the crisis in late 2015, we expanded our market test to other communities in greater Freetown Municipality area and in line with our objective we sported opportunity in the marketplace. Thus we now plan to upscale our idea to include whole of Freetown.

4. What is unique about your idea/project and how does it benefit mankind?

Our market initiative aimed at ensuring food security among the low-income household customers. The cash flow in these households is typically uneven and is prone to spikes (such as festival expenses) and other unexpected spikes (such as a health emergency). In case of an income shock, the immediate impact tends to be a restriction on their spending on food items. Na-U-Next Salone seeks to provide a cushion of food security for its beneficiary households. These households are provided an interest-free monthly rolling credit of Le75000 which they may dip into in times of emergency. Apart from the credit facility, customers may also expect to have a saving around 8–10 % on their purchases at Na-U-Next Salone truck. This cost saving is delivered by leveraging the power of aggregation amongst the weaker and lower income households.

5. Describe yourself as an entrepreneur in one sentence

An innovative social entrepreneur who believed we can achieve better lives for all by our actions.

6. How do you deal with people that doubt your abilities/initiatives?

I am a person who believes in results and so to deal with all doubting opinion, it is my duty to prove to them with fact and figure the work I have done and in addition show examples of people who have done similar work in different part of the work. With such strategy, I have over the years be able to win so many people to my side.

7. Where does your passion lie?

Social Entrepreneurship.

 8. What are you afraid of or what keeps you up at night?

Hunger and food insecurity.

9. According to you, money is a synonym for.....

Funds

10. If you could rid the world of three things, what would they be?

1. Hunger
2. Poverty
3. Inequality

11. What are the benefits you take from the Entrepreneurship Campus?

1. Able to refine my idea in a better form
2.Opportunity to meet with many people and have insight of their project
3.Believed in me as entrepreneur that I can make the world a better with my idea

12. What do you like more about the Entrepreneurship Campus?

Abundance resources to make your idea better

13. Which idea/project do you like most?

AfricEnergy

---

NOTICE: If you want to see more submitted ideas and projects at the Youth Citizen Entrepreneurship Competition, visit BEST IDEAS and BEST PROJECTS and VOTE for the ones you think deserve to WIN the Competition!