Cooperative Creates New Jobs, Saves Livelihoods

It’s dark and dingy for an evening class. But for these Ghanaian children, the light in the room is a miracle that promises a better future. It gives them the education they can’t always receive during daylight when classes are missed to help out on their parents’ farms.

The lamps that scatter the streets of this remote village of six hundred people are a major cause for celebration. Across Ghana, electricity is rationed and power cuts routine. But in villages such as Gomoa Simbrofo, such frustrations were a dreamed-of luxury. Until last year.

That’s when Ghanacoop, a migrants cooperative provided the village with solar energy. It’s just one of many things it is doing to help Ghana develop - even though its members live on another continent.

Based in the Italian city of Modena, Ghanacoop was created through a programme of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) encouraging African migrants to contribute to the socio-economic development of their country through investment and skills transfer.

Just over a year after its launch, the cooperative led by its president Thomas McCarthy, is setting a stellar example of diaspora initiative.

The idea was deliciously simple. Import sweet fair trade pineapples from Ghana allowing for job creation and investment there with profits being used for social projects like the solar panels…and sell them in Italy. Creating a business linking two countries. But it’s the investment in job creation that is perhaps most important.

“Our hope is that we create job opportunities particularly for Ghanaians who remain in Ghana and who want to come to Europe so that we can combat the migration situation in the country,” says Ghanacoop’s president, Thomas McCarthy.

An estimated three million Ghanaians have left the country, the equivalent of fifteen per cent of its population. Nearly forty-seven per cent of its population lives on one dollar or less a day. Poverty and the lack of employment possibilities, especially in rural areas, is driving youth away.

For Gomoa Simbrofo, Ghanacoop is offering hope on this. Its vice-president, Charles Nkuah, is overseeing the establishment of a two hundred and fifty acre fair trade pineapple farm here on land leased from village elders. Initially, sixty villagers will be employed.

Good news also for Sekoe Kwaku whose pineapple variety is no longer in demand in Europe and whose business nearly went under. But now he and seventy-four other producers in a similar fate and hundreds of their workers have a lifeline.

This packing house from where Ghanacoop pineapples are currently dispatched, is to become a processing plant for tinned pineapples and concentrate thanks to an eight million euro loan to Ghanacoop from two Italian banks. Sekoe’s pineapples will be among the nine tonnes needed to feed the plant each hour when it opens in two thousand and eight.

Sounds easy? Not so says Ghanacoop. Already very difficult to convince European institutions to give loans for investment outside Europe to a bunch of migrants, it’s even harder in Ghana itself.

“We find it very very difficult to get the collaboration from Ghanaian institutions especially the banks. They are not prepared to grant us loans because we are not local based. And also they have very high interest rates,” explains Ghanacoop’s vice-president, Charles Nkuah

Surprising considering Ghana’s government has targeted private sector growth and human resource development in its poverty reduction strategy.

Critical to both targets are Ghanaian migrants. Now sending at least one and a half billion dollars home each year, they’re an economic force to be reckoned with. Something clearly recognized by the Ghanaian government.

“Let’s forget about the word migrant and look at them as investors. You see when you do that, you see a brighter picture. We are calling for investment day in and day out and if we have our own people coming in to invest, then they have no inhibitions at all. They have a role to play,” says Ghana’s Deputy Minister for Small and Medium Enterprises, Gifty Ohene-Konadu.

To help investors such as Ghanacoop in the future, Ghana has taken out a forty-five million dollar loan to train its banking institutions in better supporting small and medium enterprises.

But migrant initiatives, especially when they involve a range of partners from the start-up, have knock-on benefits for migrant hosting countries too.

By teaming up with Ghanacoop, Italy’s largest fresh food producer, Agrintesa, is not only helping the migrants, but also tapping into their knowledge of African markets. It’s a crucial insight for their future business growth.

allAfrica.com: Ghana: Cooperative Creates New Jobs, Saves Livelihoods (Page 1 of 2)