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Sunu Mbourou
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Partners

Who does what, and where

A project run in Kaolack by the people who live there, with Geneva bakers who bring their trade.

The partner in Kaolack

Kaolack Departmental Council

Kaolack, Senegal

This is the authority that runs the department, with an elected council where women and men sit in equal numbers. The project was not brought to it from outside: a training centre for the artisanal trades is in the development plan the council adopted for 2024-2028, and it scheduled it for the first year. The council is providing the land and committing funds.

An elected council
80 councillors, 40 women and 40 men
The territory
14 communes, 664,000 inhabitants
What it brings
The land for the school and farmland, plus a share of the funding

The four communes where the farms will be

Naatal Kaolack grouping

Keur Socé, Latmingué, Dya and Ndiébel

The Departmental Council and these four communes joined together, by ministerial order of 3 April 2026, in a public-law grouping tasked with carrying out economic and educational development projects. It is in these four communes that the project’s wells will be drilled and its land irrigated.

What it is
A public-law body, with a public accountant and a half-yearly report
Who decides
25 elected members, five per authority
The territory
Just over 114,000 inhabitants

The Geneva bakers

Association des Artisans Boulangers-Confiseurs du Canton de Genève

Chemin Rieu 18, 1208 Geneva

The canton’s artisan bakers and confectioners bring what they know how to do: the trade, the training, and machines that will leave Geneva. Promoting vocational training is one of the missions their association wrote into its statutes.

President
Eric Emery
What they bring
Know-how, training for the trainers, machines
Since when
Partnership signed with Kaolack in May 2026

No logo is reproduced on this site: permission to use the partners’ names and marks has not yet been formalised.

Six people pose in an official office in Senegal. In the centre, Eric Emery wears a white baker’s jacket and a professional medal; to his right, a government representative in uniform.

Eric Emery, a Geneva baker, with the project’s partners in Kaolack.

Eric Emery, president of the Association des Artisans Boulangers-Confiseurs du Canton de Genève, with the project’s partnersSenegalPhotograph supplied by the project partners

The Geneva side

The trade exists here, and it gets passed on

The Geneva partner does not bring money. It brings a trade, second-hand equipment and trainers. Both pictures were taken in a Geneva bakehouse; they do not show Kaolack, where nothing has been built yet.

A baker in a white jacket holds, with both hands, a wooden board carrying four baked loaves and baguettes, in front of a deck oven with its windows lit.
Eric Emery, president of the Association des Artisans Boulangers-Confiseurs du Canton de Genève, in his bakehouseGeneva · 28 August 2026
A round entremets glazed in red, topped with red fruit and a meringue, carrying a marzipan plaque on which the project’s name is written in chocolate.
“Sunu Mbourou”: the project’s name, piped in chocolate by a Geneva pastry chefGeneva · 28 August 2026

“Sunu Mbourou” means “our bread” in Wolof. The project was given its name in August 2026; a Geneva pastry chef piped it in chocolate on the day this picture was taken.

The framework agreement

An agreement signed in May 2026, in Kaolack

The two partners have put in writing what they will do together.

Signatories

  • Eric Emery, president of the Association des Artisans Boulangers-Confiseurs du Canton de Genève
  • Ahmed Youssouph Bengelloune, president of the Kaolack Departmental Council

Duration

Two years, renewable

What the agreement covers

  • Training in the baking trades
  • Education and health
  • Social and solidarity economy
  • Agriculture
  • Environment
  • Youth

Where the agreement stands

The validation formalities are under way on both sides, as for any agreement between institutions.

Governance

Each in their place

The project belongs to Kaolack. Geneva brings a trade and looks for support.

The project is run in Kaolack by the Departmental Council and the four communes that make up the Naatal Kaolack grouping, together with Geneva’s artisan bakers. A Geneva association is being set up to support it from Switzerland: to make the project known, and to raise funds.

Each does what it knows how to do, where it is. Nothing is decided in Geneva on Kaolack’s behalf.

The parties will establish specific agreements defining the terms of their implementation.
Geneva – Kaolack partnership agreement, May 2026, our translation2026

In Kaolack

Departmental Council and four communes

Lead the project within the Naatal Kaolack grouping, provide the land and bring local stakeholders on board.

In Geneva

The artisan bakers

Know-how, training for the trainers, and machines.

Being set up

A support association

To make the project known in Switzerland and to raise funds.

Other stakeholders involved

They accompany the project

  • Kaolack bakers’ associations
  • Ministry of Vocational Training
  • Ministry of Agriculture
  • Kaolack Chamber of Trades
  • Farmers’ organisations
  • Farming cooperatives

2026Project description, Kaolack Departmental Council