Baccalauréat · Série G · Anglais — 2022

TEXT — The shop that kept a notebook

For eleven years, Madame Traoré sold rice, oil and soap in a small shop in Dassasgho. She worked from six in the morning until nine at night, and she never knew whether she was making a profit or not.

« Money came in and money went out, » she says. « When there was money in the box, I thought the business was good. When there was none, I thought the month was bad. That was all my accounting. »

In 2019, she attended a three-day training course organised by a microfinance institution. She learned nothing about selling — she already knew that better than the trainer. She learned to write: every purchase on the left page, every sale on the right page, and, at the end of the month, the difference.

The first discovery was painful. Two of her products, sold on credit to neighbours, had never been paid for. « I was working for other people and I did not know it, » she says.

Two years later, with her notebook under her arm, she obtained her first loan: eight hundred thousand francs. She now employs her nephew and sells wholesale to three smaller shops.