12:28 pm - Empowering village women in northern Ghana: Ali the Ghanaian Social Entrepreneur
While volunteering with Unite For Sight (UFS) in Northern Ghana Summer 2009, I happened to glimpse the UFS volunteer coordinator’s other project: a women’s empowerment group that features both family planning education and a co-op that processes Shea butter (a women’s beauty-product that L’Occitane, for example, sells for $35-per-5oz). Aliyu Alhassan’s project is teeming with potential to buttress this community socially and economically if only they could get fair-trade prices.
In this blog, I wish to share his accomplishments and struggles (and an exposé of the unfair traders?) photographically. The photos show the shea butter refining process and, during a sex-ed session (replete with anatomy models), the sheer number of women whose lives Ali has improved. Although our collaboration is somewhat inchoate – I’ve only just begun investigating exportation logistics and applying for USADF grants to purchase mills (for enhanced productivity) & a vehicle to reach remote villages for sex-ed – if it is successful, then perhaps it could serve as a model for charitable organizations self-sustained through an adjoined (and potentially very lucrative) business, a sort of “conscious capitalism” as featured in the 5-7-09 NYT Freakonomics column. This “women’s gold” could enhance both the producers’ livelihoods and the conscious-consumers’ sex-appeal – and what could be more mutually empowering for all the women involved? (Although that may seem a highly contentious rhetorical question, there's no denying the power of money and sex-appeal. :-x ) ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Socio-economic context -- villages of northern Ghana: roofs of mud huts float in a sea of corn fields. About 1.2 million subsistence farmers in the northern region live in these houses without running water or electricity. The population growth rate in the north -- 4% according to the Northern Region Director of the Ministry of Health of Ghana -- will beget a doubling of this region’s poor population in less than 20 years. High population growth is occurring primarily in poor countries -- distressingly, as having more children than a family can feed will clearly only exacerbate their poverty. Ali's work addresses the problem by providing women income and sex-education.
This is Ali (on the left) and two women of over 140 who have joined his group (with many more on a waiting list).
Ali shows off tubs of Shea butter...
...extracted from nuts like these.
The women roast the nuts to a burgundy-brown crisp and then grind them.
The mulch is heated further until it becomes syrupy.
The transparent yellow oil rises to the top.
The oil is then filtered.
They let the goofy silminga ("white girl" in Dagbani, the regional language) join in.
The finished product is packaged and boxed.
Unfair trade? The current buyers, whose label these boxes bear (below), pay 5750 Ghana Cedis for 5 metric tons, according to receipts -- or roughly $800 per metric ton. Shea butter distributors in the US, on the other hand, will make about $12,000 per metric ton of the same raw material if prices are extrapolated from websites such as Agbanga Karite and Vermont Soap. To me, this sounds like unfair trade! Who runs Savannah Fruits Company? I wondered. How can we bypass this middleman and have these profits go directly to the women? That is Ali's most-desired (and thus far unreachable) endeavor. It turns out that a man named Peter Lovett manages the company, if Ghana Tradenet is to be trusted as a source; I see his name all over Shea butter sites touting themselves as Fair Trade such as this one. According to Ali, his co-op provides about 50% of the Savannah Fruits Co.'s supply.
Ali has been building a production facility for 2 years now. (The primary obstacle to completion is the cost associated with cement, so for now, the women are producing out of their huts -- a clear issue for quality standards.) I'm currently investigating Shea Butter Export Guides and a grant (up to $250,000) through the US African Development Foundation to help cover construction costs, the acquisition of grinding mills, and quality standards testing.
The production facility under construction.
The bricks are cheap -- made of dirt.
Then the walls are covered-over by cement.
The other component of the grant will be to expand the sex-ed and family planning programs Ali has started. I had the rare privilege to accompany Ali on one of his sex-ed & family planning sessions held in a local school. There were about 70 women -- the school room couldn't accommodate them all!
Ali speaks as the women listen intently.
List of attendess. The co-op has also voted for certain women members to be group representatives.
"Nooo, you don't put a condom on a flaccid penis..."
"Do you think it's better to have many children, or just a few?" I asked, and Ali translated. One woman said, "2 or 3 is good because then you can send them to school. With so many children, you wouldn't have enough money to [in Ghana, junior and secondary school cost a small fee, which is often an impediment to attendance]; and how are they going to have a good future without good schooling?" Two other women expressed similar opinions.
It's important to note that these opinions are not the norm -- some women bear as many as 12 children ("Having many children is a source of African pride," Ali explained), with men taking multiple wives. Perhaps Ali's sex-ed / family planning classes have some influence? Is it possible that scaling up this work could reduce the fertility rate in the northern region?
This woman countered, "No, I think I will have 5. That way some will go to school but some can still help with farming. Also, you never know if some will die..."
At the end, after the discussion about condoms as a means to prevent further pregnancies, many women such as these came forward to ask for some. Unfortunately, we hadn't brought any...
Fighting abstinence-only education (AOE). I shot this photo on the side of the road in Tamale, the main town in the northern precinct of Ghana. I didn't investigate the programming specifics of the Datoyili Women's Coalition, which sponsored this sign, but their message is suggestive of AOE. This kind of programming -- 33% of Bush's HIV/AIDS relief aid through PEPFAR was required to be AOE -- is widely accepted to be unethical, as it flouts the basic human right of access to accurate health information. Abstinence-only programs by definition shirk providing complete and accurate information about contraception or ways to access reproductive health services. As noted in a comprehensive review about AOE, "Withholding information on contraception to induce teens to become abstinent is inherently coercive. It violates the principle of beneficence (i.e., do good and avoid harm) as it may cause an adolescent to use ineffective (or no) protection against pregnancy and STIs." Ali has his work cut out for him.
I have some grand aspirations about establishing a 501c3 and/or securing USADF grant resources for the business, and it all seems a bit ludicrous right now, but who knows? Maybe the sky's the limit. :-)
|