Stories

Sijmen Weesie (batch 11) worked at Connect International in Kenya, and is still active in Africa. He noticed a demand for high quality business development and market research services in East and West Africa. Together with Erik Grunther, he founded Scaling International in 2019. Its main mission is to accelerate growth and impact in the water, agriculture, and renewable energy sectors in East and West Africa. 

The Scaling International team consists of several alumni of YEP Programmes and in this respect forms the perfect spin-off example of what YEP Programmes aims to achieve: contributing to a dynamic international water, agricultural and energy business network. 

What they do

Scaling International partners, to scale promising and fast-growing organisations in the water, agriculture, and renewable energy sectors in East & West Africa. Scaling International provides a unique set of business development and market research services which can be tailored to the needs of the partner, such as business case development, creating marketing -and sales plans, formation and implementation of PPP’s, strategic planning, needs assessments and more. Scaling International believes in local presence and therefore its core team members are based on site, currently this is in Kenya, Cote d’Ivoire, Nigeria and Ghana.

Who they are

Scaling International’s core team consists of (from left to right on the image below) Niels van den Bosch (YEP Alumnus, Néné Barry (YEP Alumna), Kingsley Owino, Tim-Jan Huldman (YEP Alumnus), Erik Grunther and Sijmen Weesie (YEP Alumnus). The Scaling International team consists of thinkers, strategists and leaders with fast and hands-on solutions. Combined, they have more than 30 years of working experience in Africa. This is what makes Scaling International so unique: its experiences in business development in different sectors and the fact that the team is based on the ground, allows it to complement each other’s strengths in a broad and professional network. 

The company is supported by different promoters, such as the Vice President of the Kenya National Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KNCCI).

Some of their projects...

• Market research, creation and implementation support of sales and marketing plans for a water filter supplier

• Development of a water test lab in collaboration with a public sector organisation

• Collaboration with a partner that produces bagasse-briquettes, which is an alternative fuel source based on dried sugar cane waste

• Analysis project of transforming slaughterhouse waste into organic fertilizer, which in turn can be used by farmers to manure their lands

Have a look on their website: www.scalinginternational.com, and feel welcome to reach out to them: [email protected]