From Africa Recovery, Vol.13#1 (June 1999), page 25

Local initiative attacks poverty

By Djibril Diallo
Director, Division of Public Affairs, UNDP

Her name is Awa Diakité. She is a 36-year-old mother of three. Until three years ago, she was like most rural women in Burkina Faso. She lived a life of extreme poverty, barely able to generate the income to feed herself and her three children in spite of the long days she put in at her farm. Not only were harvests poor, the prices paid at the markets were low. But all that has changed, thanks to an innovative programme initiated by the Songtaaba Women's Group, a cooperative movement that has taken root in the country.

Today, Awa is one of hundreds of Burkinabè women helping meet the growing demands of the national and international markets for karite (shea) butter, Burkina Faso's third biggest agricultural export. The cooperative in her village is one of many that have been set up under the auspices of the Songtaaba Women's Group to produce and market karite butter. Awa's role is to help process karite butter after it has been extracted. Through that job, she now earns a stable income and is able to meet her family's basic needs. She is even able to put something aside as savings.

The production from the village cooperative is fed into a nationwide marketing arrangement. Karite butter is used locally as a foodstuff and for making bath soap, laundry soap and other products. It is also exported to the US, Europe and Asia for making chocolate, for baking and for pharmaceutical products and cosmetics.

Traditionally, making karite butter was an exclusively feminine activity in Burkina Faso, but the product's potential in the national and export market had never been fully exploited. Determined to change this, the Songtaaba Women's Group introduced an "assembly line economy of scale" with women's cooperatives as the backbone. It structured the production process so that individual participants are no longer responsible for all steps of production. Instead, each woman works on a specific stage -- cultivation of karite nuts, preparation for extraction, oil extraction, further processing of the karite butter (depending on its final use), and packaging.

The women workers are paid according to their tasks and their availability. To accommodate unique family situations, workers are given flexible hours. They are also given access to a line of credit through the cooperative to improve their financial security. In addition, a special fund established by the group helps members in times of need, such as a death in the family, medical emergencies or school fees.

The result has been a greatly increased level of the production, along with a general improvement in the quality of the product. In turn, there has been a widening of the market for the product, both locally and abroad, with increased orders coming in from such far-flung places as Europe, the Americas and Asia. In 1996, the cooperative successfully identified markets for about 500 tonnes of karite butter with a market value of $410,000.

Even more important is the change that the project has brought to women like Awa. They have seen their lives shift from a daily search for basic subsistence to a situation in which they have become economically empowered and able to command steady incomes. They have a sense of security they never had before. No less than 2,000 women are currently involved in the production of karite butter through the cooperative. Virtually all have stories to tell similar to Awa's.

The karite network is an example of the kind of project which the UN Development Programme (UNDP) supports in its effort to promote sustainable livelihoods in needy communities in the developing world. Since the 1995 Social Summit in Copenhagen and the UN General Assembly's designation of the years 1996 to 2006 as the International Decade for the Eradication of Poverty, UNDP has made the eradication of poverty its over-arching goal.

Nowhere else is the challenge of poverty more visible than in Africa. According to projections, if current trends continue, Africa will enter the next century worse off than it began the current one. In recognition of the peculiar challenge facing Africa, UNDP is channeling a substantial portion of its anti-poverty work to the continent.

Ms. Thelma Awori, Director of UNDP Africa, in reaffirming UNDP's commitment to Africa, told participants at a recent business summit in Houston, Texas, that 50 per cent of total UNDP resources now goes to Africa.

She proclaims her optimism about the continent. At a meeting of UNDP Resident Representatives in Cotonou, Benin, in February, she said that although the situation in Africa is critical, "I am very hopeful that we are now at a turning point in realizing the destiny of Africa." That hope is one that is shared by many.

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