Be The Light.

Name:

Gabriel Kombassere

Age:

Location:

Ivory Coast

The Innovation:

Social Entrepreneur who formed Ribla Neda, an association seeking to eradicate starvation in his region.

Brief Bio:

Gabriel Kombassere is originally from Burkina Faso but is currently living in Ivory Coast with his parents. He is a student and a teen social entrepreneur. Gabriel comes from a modest family of 8 children and experienced starvation during my childhood. He is on a mission to eradicate this phenomenon in his region.

Developments:

Gabriel founded Ribla Neda, an association seeking to eradicate starvation in his region. His basic principle is: We may be students but we can help our parents. Having grown up farming from the age of 8, he invested in what came naturally by asking his uncle for a piece of land and started to grow maize and cassava. He now employs 4 students and have 30 members in his organisation. Annually, they produce over 20 bags of maize and a cargo of cassava.

Gabriel says he was able to do it with limited resources and at a young age because of his courage and determination to reach out, no matter the difficulties and his ability to turn problems into projects.

In his own words: Social entrepreneurship is an alternative to mainstream capitalism that offers solutions to problems that governments and profit driven businesses have failed to address. Social entrepreneurs fulfill unmet social needs by giving greater importance to their social mission than profit-maximization. Of all areas of biological innovation, agriculture is the most important, affecting our environment, our health, our economies, and the fabric of our societies. Agriculture is important in social entrepreneurship because the world’s poorest nations depend largely on agriculture for their economic survival as well as their food, fuel and fiber. The challenges of innovation to create and sustain productive and environmentally sound agriculture are even more pronounced in our societies.

Social entrepreneurs are concerned with correcting perceived market and government failures so they must aim to provide long-term fixes to these problems – their focus must be achieving sustainable solutions instead of achieving sustainable advantages. Gabriel is committed to solving these deep-rooted problems.