The 26-year-old Burkina Faso native is the star student of a novel project aimed at training asylum seekers in one of Italy’s most emblematic crafts: making leather handbagsAnd after a 15-month apprenticeship, Bassirou has just become the first employee of a small company set up with the aim of turning the project into a self-sustaining venture.

“It is a great opportunity,” he says of his new career move. “I had done a bit of cutting and sewing back home but that was with cloth, not leather.”It wasn’t easy at the start, every little thing seemed difficult, but after a certain point, you get the hang of it.”Bassirou left Burkina Faso in west Africa, and a partner then pregnant with his now two-year-old daughter, in 2015.He says he fled because he feared for his life in the tumultuous aftermath of yet another military coup in the impoverished former French colony.Now he is awaiting the outcome of his application for asylum in Italy and is one of some 400 recently-arrived immigrants being looked after by Lai-Momo, a social cooperative that runs the EU-funded leather skills project in the small town of Lama Di Reno near Bologna.The decision to leave home was not an easy one, B…