MONROVIA, Montserrado – This year’s Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise Conference revealed several Liberian female entrepreneurs who are thriving despite the challenges of doing business in Liberia.

The two-day conference was held at the Monrovia City Hall from Nov. 17-18 by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. The conference allowed entrepreneurs to display their products at booths in an exhibition hall.

One such entrepreneur was Helen Kulue, who runs a waste management company that manufactures organic compost to sell as a local and natural fertilizer.

Kulue said her company was initially engaged in door-to-door waste collection; she decided to add value to the waste collected instead of simply dumping it.

Helen Kulue, owner of Safety Plus Inc. Photo: Zeze Ballah

She said a colleague based in Europe encouraged her to start her business by suggesting that something better could be done with the waste collected every day.

“I engaged a nongovernmental organizational, Global Communities, and they provided training in waste management,” Kulue said.

After her training, Safety Plus was founded, and the company started issuing two waste bins to each household within her collection zone.

One bin would contain the organic waste (food products such as fruits, vegetables, discarded meat, among others) and the other, the inorganic or non-biodegradable waste (plastic bags, bottles, etc.)

Kulue said the process by which the waste is converted into the final product “is still difficult because of the lack of machines.”

The organic waste is cut into pieces and packed for processing – which takes between six and seven weeks – before packaging for sale.

Most of Kulue’s clients are expats and individuals working with the many nongovernmental organizations and multinational institutions in Liberia. They usually use the compost in flower pots and gardens in their backyards.

Kulue said a few Liberians have also tried her product and have been impressed, but she has had little traction in this segment of the population. Safety Plus’s biggest target now, Kulue said, is to partner with the World Food Program in Liberia.

Even though the work she does is very labor intensive, Kulue said “as a female among my male counterparts, I feel opportune to find myself in the business arena.”

Participants at the MSME Conference. Photo: Zeze Ballah

In another booth at the exhibition was Patricia Gant, another Liberian female entrepreneur and head of Patom Enterprise. Her company processes and packages farm products made in Liberia. Among those are dried pepper, snail, dried kittily, and bitter leaves. Some of Gant’s products are even exported for sale at a grocery store in Philadelphia.

Like Kulue, Gant said the major challenge her business faces is the difficulty in scaling up production because most of her processes are manually done.

Gant said the machines used to process these products are procured outside of Liberia, and they are also costly.

Small businesses still find it difficult to obtain loans owing to relatively high interest rates coupled with tough collateral requirements. The Central Bank of Liberia calculated the average interest rate for commercial bank loans to be between 13-14% for 2014.

Farm products on display at the conference. Photo: Zeze Ballah

The Ministry of Commerce first launched the MSME Conference in 2013 as part of its strategy to promote micro, small and medium enterprises to alleviate poverty and create wealth for Liberians. The policy was endorsed as critical to inclusive growth.

Featured photo by Zeze Ballah