Nominee: Midadi Diakhaté — Senegal Connect
Category: West African Business of the Year
Country: Senegal 🇸🇳
Introduction: Connecting local talent with global opportunity
A country’s entrepreneurial strength is reflected not only in the businesses it creates, but also in its ability to help those businesses reach new customers, enter new markets and gain recognition beyond their borders.
Midadi Diakhaté, entrepreneur, communications professional and president of So’Ma Consulting Group, has pursued this vision through Senegal Connect, a professional trade-show platform created to showcase Senegalese businesses, products and creative expertise to international audiences.
Developed from an initiative to support entrepreneurs during the COVID-19 pandemic, Senegal Connect has evolved into a platform designed to connect local businesses with wider commercial opportunities. Its work brings together brands, designers, artisans and entrepreneurs across different sectors, giving them a space to present their products and build professional relationships.
Through this initiative, Diakhaté has contributed to a broader conversation about how Senegalese enterprise can strengthen its visibility and competitiveness in international markets.
Her nomination for West African Business of the Year at WAFRIC Awards 2026 recognises the entrepreneurial vision behind Senegal Connect and its focus on promoting local talent through cross-border business connections.
From a crisis-era initiative to an international platform
The origins of Senegal Connect can be traced to 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted commercial activity and created serious challenges for entrepreneurs.
With physical businesses operating under difficult conditions and many entrepreneurs turning to digital channels to sustain their activities, Diakhaté was approached in her capacity as a communications consultant to support an initiative intended to help businesses regain momentum.
What began as a private-sale event gradually developed into a more ambitious idea. The organisers began considering how Senegalese businesses could reach audiences outside the domestic market and present their products within an organised international setting.
This thinking helped shape Senegal Connect as a platform that could offer more than temporary sales opportunities. The ambition was to create a professional environment in which businesses could present their work, meet potential customers and partners, and explore opportunities beyond Senegal.
Paris was selected for the first edition in 2022, providing a setting through which Senegalese brands could introduce their products to an international audience.
The initiative’s evolution illustrates how a response to an immediate business challenge can develop into a longer-term entrepreneurial project. By looking beyond the disruption of the pandemic, the founders identified an opportunity to build a platform around Senegalese creativity, enterprise and international visibility.
Senegal Connect: A showcase for Made in Senegal
Senegal Connect is built around a clear objective: promoting Senegalese products and expertise while helping businesses connect with international markets.
The platform brings together enterprises from a variety of sectors, including fashion, textiles, leather goods, accessories, hair and beauty, natural products, gastronomy and handicrafts.
This diversity is important because Senegalese entrepreneurship extends well beyond any single industry. Local businesses combine traditional knowledge, contemporary design, specialised craftsmanship and innovative approaches to products and services.
A professional trade-show environment allows these businesses to present their work directly, communicate the value behind their products and engage with potential customers and commercial partners.
Senegal Connect also provides an opportunity to tell a broader story about Senegalese enterprise. Rather than presenting products as isolated items for sale, the platform places them within a wider context of creativity, cultural identity and business capability.
The emphasis on Made in Senegal therefore extends beyond product promotion. It is also about building recognition for local expertise and encouraging audiences to consider Senegalese businesses as participants in wider commercial markets.
Opening doors to international markets
One of the central challenges for small and growing businesses is moving from local visibility to international commercial opportunity.
Entrepreneurs may have distinctive products and strong creative capabilities but still face difficulties accessing new customers, developing professional networks or presenting their work to audiences unfamiliar with their brands.
Senegal Connect seeks to address this challenge by creating a structured setting for international exposure.
Its Paris trade-show format gives participating businesses the opportunity to showcase their products in a market outside Senegal, interact with visitors and engage with a wider professional environment.
The platform’s organisers have also emphasised the importance of carefully selecting exhibitors. In an interview published in 2026, Diakhaté explained that the aim was not simply to gather a large number of vendors, but to bring together businesses and creators with distinctive products and a professional outlook.
This focus on quality reflects a broader understanding of market access. International expansion involves more than being seen; businesses also need to communicate their value, understand customer expectations and establish relationships that may support future growth.
By placing Senegalese brands in an international setting, Senegal Connect creates a space in which those connections can begin.
More than a trade fair: Creating opportunities for entrepreneurs
Trade shows can serve several purposes at once. They allow businesses to present products, introduce new brands, observe market preferences and build relationships with potential partners.
For smaller enterprises, these opportunities can be particularly valuable because establishing an international presence independently may require significant resources, connections and preparation.
Senegal Connect offers participating businesses a shared platform through which they can present their work within a coordinated professional event.
Its organisers have described the initiative as evolving from a straightforward commercial gathering towards a broader platform for visibility and business development. That evolution reflects the ambition to create value beyond immediate sales by helping entrepreneurs position their brands within a wider marketplace.
The platform also brings different sectors into the same environment. Fashion designers can share space with artisans, food businesses, beauty brands and other entrepreneurs, offering visitors a broader picture of the range of products and expertise associated with Senegal.
For participating businesses, this creates opportunities to learn from other enterprises, make connections and consider new ways of presenting their work.
The wider value of such a platform depends on the relationships and commercial opportunities that develop through participation. Senegal Connect’s model is designed to help create the conditions in which those opportunities can emerge.
The entrepreneurial vision behind the platform
Diakhaté’s work with Senegal Connect reflects an entrepreneurial approach that combines communications expertise with business development and the promotion of local enterprise.
As president of So’Ma Consulting Group, she operates within a professional environment connected to communication and strategic support. Her experience in this field helped shape the original initiative that became Senegal Connect.
This background is relevant because businesses entering new markets must do more than produce goods. They also need to communicate their identity, distinguish themselves from competitors and present their value to audiences who may be encountering their brands for the first time.
A platform such as Senegal Connect brings these needs together through a shared event and an identifiable focus on Senegalese products.
Diakhaté’s vision places local businesses at the centre of the story. The aim is to give entrepreneurs a professional setting in which their products and capabilities can be encountered by new audiences, while strengthening the connection between Senegalese creativity and international commercial opportunity.
Her work also demonstrates the role of collaboration in entrepreneurship. Senegal Connect was developed collectively, with its founding team bringing different contributions to the creation and growth of the initiative.
A collective effort to promote Senegalese enterprise
Although Diakhaté is closely associated with the initiative, Senegal Connect emerged from the collaboration of four founders: Midadi Diakhaté, Rokhy Ndiaye, Aminata Tall and Oulèye Ba.
This collective foundation is an important part of the project’s story. Developing a trade-show platform requires more than an initial idea. It involves planning, coordination, exhibitor engagement, event organisation, communications and the ability to bring different businesses together around a common objective.
The founders’ collaboration helped transform an initial effort to support entrepreneurs into a more structured initiative with an international outlook.
Their work reflects a wider principle in business development: partnerships can help bring together complementary skills and resources, allowing an idea to develop beyond what one person might achieve independently.
Recognising Diakhaté’s entrepreneurial contribution should therefore also acknowledge the collaborative structure through which Senegal Connect was conceived and developed.
The platform’s focus remains on the businesses it brings together and the opportunities it seeks to create for Senegalese entrepreneurs.
Promoting Senegalese creativity across sectors
Senegal’s business landscape includes enterprises built around craftsmanship, contemporary design, food production, beauty, fashion and a wide range of creative services.
Many of these businesses carry distinctive cultural knowledge and locally developed expertise. Their ability to reach new markets can create opportunities for growth while bringing greater visibility to the people and skills behind their products.
Senegal Connect’s sectoral diversity reflects this breadth. By bringing together different types of businesses, the platform presents visitors with a wider view of Senegalese enterprise than a single-industry exhibition might provide.
The initiative also helps communicate the idea that local products can compete for attention in international environments when presented with a clear identity and professional positioning.
This does not mean every participating business will automatically secure new contracts or expand internationally. Rather, the platform creates a setting in which exposure, networking and commercial conversations can take place.
That distinction matters when assessing entrepreneurial initiatives: their value includes the opportunities they facilitate, while lasting commercial outcomes depend on how individual businesses develop and follow through on those opportunities.
Why Senegal Connect’s work matters to West African business
West African entrepreneurs operate in markets where access to networks, finance, customers and international visibility can influence the development of their businesses.
Platforms that connect enterprises with new audiences can contribute to the wider business ecosystem by making products more visible and creating opportunities for commercial exchange.
Senegal Connect offers one example of how an initiative originating in Senegal can use an international trade-show format to promote local brands and expertise.
Its approach also speaks to the importance of regional identity in business development. A strong local identity can help businesses communicate what makes their products distinctive, while international exposure can introduce those products to customers and partners who may not otherwise encounter them.
For West Africa, these connections can form part of a wider conversation about supporting small businesses, encouraging entrepreneurship and strengthening the pathways through which local enterprises reach regional and global markets.
Diakhaté’s work through Senegal Connect contributes to that conversation by focusing on the practical process of presenting businesses, bringing entrepreneurs together and creating opportunities for cross-border engagement.
Why Midadi Diakhaté and Senegal Connect are nominated for West African Business of the Year
The West African Business of the Year category at WAFRIC Awards 2026 recognises businesses and entrepreneurial initiatives contributing to enterprise, innovation and economic opportunity across the region.
Senegal Connect’s documented journey includes its emergence during the COVID-19 disruption, the development of its first Paris edition in 2022 and its continued focus on presenting Senegalese businesses to international audiences.
Under the leadership of Midadi Diakhaté and in collaboration with its co-founders, the platform has developed a business model centred on visibility, professional presentation and connections between local entrepreneurs and wider markets.
Its work brings together several dimensions of entrepreneurship: identifying a need, creating a platform to address it, building partnerships and adapting the initiative as its ambitions develop.
The nomination provides an opportunity to recognise the entrepreneurial vision behind Senegal Connect and its contribution to promoting Senegalese business capabilities internationally.
It also highlights the importance of initiatives that create opportunities for other businesses, particularly those seeking ways to present their products and develop their commercial reach.
Support Senegal Connect at WAFRIC Awards 2026
Midadi Diakhaté and Senegal Connect represent Senegal in the West African Business of the Year category at WAFRIC Awards 2026.
From its beginnings as an initiative to support entrepreneurs during the pandemic to its development as an international showcase for Senegalese products, Senegal Connect reflects an entrepreneurial vision built around collaboration, visibility and market access.
Supporters who believe in promoting West African enterprise can participate in the ongoing public voting through the official WAFRIC Awards voting platform.
Follow WAFRIC Awards’ official channels for voting instructions and updates, and share the nomination with entrepreneurs, business professionals and supporters of African-made products.
Celebrate the businesses creating opportunities, connecting markets and bringing West African talent to the world. Support Senegal Connect at WAFRIC Awards 2026.
WAFRIC Awards 2026 — Celebrating African excellence, creativity and impact.