DP WORLD
SENEGAL

In 2021 DP World Dakar signed an agreement with Barefoot College International (BCI), an international NGO that works with marginalised rural women in more than 90 countries worldwide. The funding grant enabled BCI to train rural women in West Africa to become solar engineers, educators, and micro-entrepreneurs. 

This innovative training used literacy optional teaching methods, creating opportunities for women with little or no traditional education background. On completion of the training, the women are able to install, maintain, and repair solar powered infrastructure in their local communities, set up profitable micro-enterprises, and train new women from their communities to do the same. 

This facilitates additional livelihood opportunities each community and contributes to long term sustainable economic uplift for all. The graduates play a key role in their communities by providing much needed sustainable energy through solar power. 

Education is one of the key areas of focus of our sustainability progreamme. Global education needs are urgent in developing economies like Senegal and we have rolled out the programme through several schools since its launch in 2016.

The programme has boosted young people’s skills and confidence, and has developed the talent pipeline of future employees by raising awareness of the maritime sector and future job opportunities.

In 2015, in partnership with a Swiss NGO, we built a nursery school in Mbam, in the Saloum Islands, 200km from the Senegalese Capital of Dakar.

Improving the education of children and allowing them to have a better future, particularly for low-income families, enables mothers to have their own income generating activities while the kindergarten takes care of children.