Madina Fanette has always had a passion for cooking. After years of culinary training, she’s made this dream her livelihood. Today, she owns and operates a restaurant from her front yard in Berbérati, the second-largest city in the Central African Republic (CAR). She brings in hungry locals for her fresh fish, beef dishes and her popular Saturday soup. While she currently experiences great success, her entrepreneurial journey has been anything but easy.  

Fanette fled the country in 2012 during the civil war, lived in refugee camps for five years and worked most of that time in food service before returning to the CAR to open her own restaurant in 2017.

Water for Good, a nonprofit that aims to end water poverty in the CAR, has helped provide Berbérati and other cities with clean water wells. Analytics and data visualization have played an important role in these efforts to ensure that others like Fanette have water for cooking and cleaning while also protecting the lives of thousands of citizens from deadly water-related diseases.