You are here: Home / Archives for Fairtrade

Another excuse to keep Africans poor?

January 27, 2010 By 2 Comments

I stumbled upon a conversation on Twitter regarding a new kind of cola, Ubuntu Cola to be precise. I was told that this is a fairtrade cola that enables farmers in Malawi to earn a fair wage.

I was intrigued by this so I asked more questions and I learned that what makes this cola a fairtrade product is because the sugar used is fairtrade certified.

I did ask whether this cola was kind to teeth or even good for weight management and how exactly did the African farmers benefit? I also wanted to know whether this cola was processed packaged and distributed in Africa? In my mind  any system that extracts materials from Africa and adds value elsewhere cannot claim to be truly fair to the African growers!

The response I got back knocked me for 6

we want to offer an alternative to the world’s biggest selling soft drink and give sugar farmers a fair price  and we totally agree  with addiding value at source but to bottle you need factories using water in countries that dont have enough and then transport to UK

This response has prompted me to ask whether this is yet another excuse to keep Africans poor? You will recall the Starbucks story on how they waste water, water is also required in the processing of coffee. Is the lack of water another  excuse to keep Africans poor?

An  argument  that I have heard put forward by the coffee industry  is even more baffling, coffee cannot be roasted and packaged in Africa for shipping to Europe as it would get spoiled along the way!

In the meantime farmers get only 3% of the profits whilst 97% is earned elsewhere and to add salt to the wound some of these products are then exported back to Africa at prices that folk in Africa can ill afford!

Does Africa truly stand a chance of lifting herself out of poverty at this rate? I sincerely do not know but all I know that so long as Africa continues to be a supplier of raw materials the journey out of poverty will be a slow and painful one.

The economic down turn has meant that folk in that used u to buy diamonds for instance could no longer afford them and the  consequences of this was mines closed and workers were laid off. Isn’t it time that Africa became a consumer  of its own raw materials/products or even started adding value to these materials prior to exporting them?

Have you got a view on anything raised here? If so lets hear it!

Share
Filed Under: Sustainable development, Water Aid Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Ending poverty in Africa- Trade not AID model

September 2, 2009 By 4 Comments

Yesterday, I introduced the notion that ending poverty in Africa was not simply about giving more money. I asked the question why governments were not promoting more sustainable models.

A model that I am especially interested in is called RAISE TRADE, and the idea behind this concept is the move away from exporting of raw materials from developing nations and adding value else where. The founder of this model Neil Kelsall is the brains behind a very successful Malagasy chocolate based on the RAISE TRADE model. This model departs from the models that enable cooperatives in Africa to simply own shares of companies as the well as the Fairtrade models, and enables value to be added at source which increases income for the producer as well as the government through tax revenues which is not possible if value is added elsewhere.

How might this work in practice?

Take OTTIMO CAFFE, a specialist coffee roaster from North London looking to source his coffee in a more ethical way, a Uganda based coffee cooperative looking to add value to their coffees before the coffee is exported, so they can earn a higher price for their produce, a government looking to earn more tax revenue from its cash crop ,  an investor looking to invest in a socially responsible venture, that will bring him good returns at the same time and finally a retailer who must source his products more ethically because his customers demand it!

Everyone of these people have some expertise to bring to the table and the overall goal here is to produce a fully processed coffee that can be exported to the western world at the Cooperative headquarter in Uganda. This is indeed that live case that I am involved in and I have been responsible for bringing all the parties together. I must add that it is early days yet as we work the details out but all the parties are in agreement that this is the way forward in the fight against poverty.

If this model is that fantastic I hear you say, why isn’t it being adopted on a much wider scale? Well that is the question I would like an answer too. But one thing  is certain, this is doable and Neil has proved that. Is it therefore a case of committment on the aprt of decision makers, Businesses, Retailers or investors? Who is responsible for making this practice wide spread?

The fashion industry has in many ways lead the way in the VALUE ADD movement, they have however let themselves down by unfair practices especially the working conditions of the producers, we have all heard about PRIMARK being associated to the so called sweat shops.

Do you have a view on any of the issues raised here? Please share it, in the meantime take a look at Neil’s presentation below.

In the next blog, I will bring to life a conversation I had with the CEO of the Investment Facility of Africa and you will learn why poverty in Africa is simply not about money

Share
Filed Under: Good Practice, Poverty in Africa, Sustainable development Tagged With: , , , , ,

Is volunteering a waste of time?

April 16, 2009 By 7 Comments

My immediate reaction to this question is another question. Why would anyone say so?

The reason I would ask such a question is because when you volunteer be it your time or services you do so of your own free will and often these have not been solicited and even then you can still walk away.

That being the case why then would someone make such a statement as “volunteering is a waste of my time”

I am not an expert at this but drawing from my personal experience of volunteering my time and or services that feeling of “waste of of time” arises when expectations on both sides have not been made clear or met.

I will illustrate this from my experience. I arrived here in the UK in 1991 and lived in Dalston East London for a while and apart my immediate family I didn’t know anyone else in Dalston and my working hours made it near impossible for me to make friends locally. One morning as I was walking to the shops I saw an advertisement in the window of a building occupied by the local Age concern branch. They were looking for people to visit elderly people in Homerton Hospital whom some reason or other didn’t have any visitors.

I was surprised to learn that they were people out there who did not have anyone visiting them whilst in hospital, because where I come from this is unheard of. But of course our African families tend to be very large.

I walked into the Age concern office and introduced myself and an hour later I was signed up for the volunteers training scheme prior to being allowed onto the wards or being attached to any of the patients. All of the trainees were local people and this met my need/desire of meeting and making friends with local people. We got on well as a group and continued to meet well after the training had ended.

I was assigned to a woman whose so had moved to Australia and this was the reason she has no one visiting here. I saw her every week and sadly she passed away six weeks after I started visiting her. I never felt that my time was wasted at all as my primary need or the reason why I had joined had been met.
Interestingly a few years later I used the experience I gained as a volunteer for age concern to gain a full time and paid position at another organisation. All things considered I gained a lot more out of this experience.

Sadly not all volunteering services go well as I was to find out when I volunteered by services to a school in Stirling Scotland. I helped with sourcing ethical clothing that could be used for the show. My expectations and certainly what was agreed was that I would be part of the show and present my work in Africa to a Scottish audience. From a business point f view this type of exposure is priceless and it would open up a whole new market so I gave all I could.

To my horror the school pulled out the day before I was due to travel to Stirling leaving me out of pocket and unable to recover my direct costs of my airfare as well as the money I had paid the ladies for the work they did.

Discussions are still underway to resolve this so I can’t say anymore than this. In this example I feel that the volunteering of my time to enable the school to access Fair Trade clothing from our producers in Tanzania was a waste.

Compare therefore the difference between the two tales/experiences!

 

If you have only experienced the first example you maybe encouraged to seek out more voluntary opportunities but on the other hand if the sum total of experience is as described in example two you would be forgiven for never wanting to give your time or services free of charge.

If you have been a volunteer I would love to hear from you with your experiences on what worked well as well as that which didn’t

Share
Filed Under: Good Practice Tagged With: , ,