Category: Lifestyle

Côte d’Ivoire, where money does grow on (cashew) trees

Forty years ago, Henri Kouakou was struggling to support his family farming a small plot outside Bondoukou, a dusty town in northeastern Côte d’Ivoire, when he first learned that money did, in fact, grow on trees – cashew trees.

“I was raising yams back then and wasn’t earning enough. I heard people talking about a new tree you could make money growing,” he said, strolling through his plantation beneath a canopy of cashew tree branches.

By his own reckoning, Kouakou, among the earliest pioneers of the Ivorian cashew sector, is nearly 100 years old. He has seen the nuts, initially planted in the 1970s to combat desertification, emerge as an important cash crop for the West African nation’s impoverished north.

And with output growing by over 10 percent annually – attracting the attention of a government desperate to jump-start its economy after a decade of war and political chaos – he will likely live to see his country dominate the world market.

Henri Kouakou at his cashew plantation in Bondoukou. (Pic: Reuters)
Henri Kouakou at his cashew plantation in Bondoukou. (Pic: Reuters)

Even a decade ago, Côte d’Ivoire was a middling producer, growing around 80 000 tonnes of raw cashews per year. By last season, however, as demand for the nuts has grown, output had jumped to around a half million tonnes, making it the world’s top exporter and second to India in overall production.

Astounding growth
In the north of the country, cotton and cashews are the only cash crops, so as some cashew growers have started to do well, others have piled in. Output has increased because new plantations planted in recent years are coming into production.

“The growth is more than impressive. It’s astounding,” said Jim Fitzpatrick, a cashew expert. “We’ve never seen a country grow its production in the way Côte d’Ivoire has over the past decade.”

This season, for the first time, the government set a guaranteed minimum price for cashew farmers, fixing it at 250 CFA francs ($0.48) per kilo of raw nuts. According to Malamine Sanogo, managing director of the sector’s marketing board, the Cotton and Cashew Council (CCA), Côte d’Ivoire has hardly scratched the surface of the enormous potential.

Ninety-five percent of Ivorian output is exported raw to India and Vietnam for processing. Sanogo says that work should be done in Côte d’Ivoire by Ivorian workers.

“We think that with processing we will create many jobs and we will create lots of added value for the country,” he said.

Within the next five years, the CCA wants 35 percent of Côte d’Ivoire’s raw cashew output processed locally. Sanogo said bringing processors closer to producers will allow Côte d’Ivoire to cut out some of the intermediaries in the supply chain, boost prices for farmers, and above all create jobs.

Having doubled production over the past decade, Africa’s two million cashew farmers produce nearly half of the world’s supply of raw nuts, according to the African Cashew Alliance. Many, including growers in top African producers Guinea-Bissau, Nigeria and Mozambique, are watching closely Côte d’Ivoire’s efforts to become a major player in a global market valued at up to $7.8 billion.

War and revival
In 2002, a failed coup attempt plunged Côte d’Ivoire into a civil war that split the world’s top cocoa producer in two. Once a model of stability and prosperity in a troubled region,Côte d’Ivoire would remain divided between rebels in the north and southern government loyalists for almost a decade.

Having emerged as the country’s new president following a civil war in 2011, Alassane Ouattara, a former senior International Monetary Fund official, has ushered in economic growth of over 9 percent in past two years.

But little of that growth – fuelled largely by billion-dollar investments in large infrastructure projects – has trickled down to the nearly half of Ivorians living on less than $2 per day. That’s where the government hopes cashews can help.

Some 600 000 farmers already grow the nuts, according to the CCA. But the creation of a domestic processing industry would mean more jobs in the sector.

Workers handle cashew nuts at a processing plant in Bouake. (Pic: Reuters)
Workers handle cashew nuts at a processing plant in Bouake. (Pic: Reuters)

Advocates of the plan point to the giant cottage industry in India where a typical unit processes around 10 tonnes of cashews a day with a workforce of 1 000.

According to a study carried out by the CCA, every 100 000 tonnes of processing capacity Côte d’Ivoire develops will create 12 300 factory jobs and another 10 000 elsewhere in the sector.

On the spotless campus of the large processing factory run by Singapore-based soft commodities trader Olam International in the central city of Bouake, uniformed employees queue up every morning for work.

The plant and a second, smaller facility, employ around 3 500 workers with capacity to process 40 000 tonnes.

“You can imagine if we can process 10 times this number how much employment can be created. And that is only direct employment,” Issa Konate, Olam’s head of procurement for the facilities, told Reuters.

Panacea for unemployment
If it can pull it off, Côte d’Ivoire would be the first African nation to build a large-scale cashew nut processing sector as a panacea for unemployment, a problem plaguing countries across the continent.

The African Cashew Alliance estimates that a 25 percent increase in raw cashew nut processing in Africa would generate more than $100 million in household income.

But Ouattara’s government has an additional, even more pressing, concern: creating gainful employment for the 74,000 ex-combatants it is seeking to demobilise in the coming year.

“That’s what happened in Vietnam,” Yao Appia Koffi, vice-president of Côte d’Ivoire’s Cashew Exporters Association. “When they were emerging from their war in the 1980s they developed that industry and it allowed a lot of ex-fighters to find work.”

The broken nut conundrum
Not everyone is so starry-eyed, however. “Processing? I’m not sure what the government can do … It’s foolishness,” one Côte d’Ivoire-based cashew exporter said, asking not to be named. Côte d’Ivoire indeed faces some daunting obstacles.

In addition to competing with processing sectors in India and Vietnam, it must convince private sector partners that political stability will last. It also needs major investments in machinery and must train tens of thousands of new workers.

But its biggest challenge will be what to do about nuts damaged in processing – what the industry calls brokens – which typically constitute 30 to 40 percent of output.

In India, the world’s largest cashew producer and also the biggest consumer, brokens are absorbed by the domestic market. The same is true in Brazil, the number three processor. Vietnam has traditionally sold much of its brokens in India and has another big market for damaged nuts, China, next door.

Côte d’Ivoire, with only infinitesimal domestic consumption, has none of these options, and its less skilled workforce means that the portion of brokens is even higher there.

Promoting cashew consumption in Côte d’Ivoire and neighbouring countries is one possibility. But even supporters of this strategy admit it will take time with no guarantee of success.

Côte d’Ivoire’s cashew sector may just have come of age at the perfect time. Experts say investors, worried by the dominance of India and Vietnam, are showing interest in diversifying supply and Africa is a logical choice for new processing facilities.

From just 35 000 tonnes in 2006, Africa processed a total of 114 600 tonnes of raw cashew nuts in 2012.

At the same time, manufacturers say technological advances in processing equipment will reduce the number of brokens to between 10 and 20 percent. Even the definition of what constitutes an exportable nut appears to be changing.

Only last year, the difference in the price of a pound of export quality, whole kernel cashews and large brokens was around $2. That difference is now less than a dollar.

“If that trend persists it will create a big change in the economics of processing,” said Fitzpatrick, who works with the African Cashew Initiative, United Nations, European governments and private investors to develop cashew processing in Africa.

Demand for edible nuts is growing, but the supply of pristine nuts is not. So it appears that buyers are willing to buy more, and pay more for, brokens.

Back in Bondoukou, Henri Kouakou is cautiously optimistic. He’s long been at the mercy of volatile, unregulated prices. Not far from his plantation stands a sprawling compound he started building for his family but has never been able to finish.

“If the government could raise the price to 400 or 450 CFA francs I would retire right now. I would be at home with enough money to eat and feed my entire family.” (1 US dollar = 517.9300 CFA franc)

Somalis in London: What we can learn from them after 100 years

(Pic: Reuters)
(Pic: Reuters)

There has been a Somali presence in London for over a hundred years. The first Somalis to arrive in Britain were economic migrants. Merchant seamen settled in cities including Cardiff, Liverpool and London. There are records of British Somalis in London dating back to 1914 when they were recruited to fight in the First World War and then subsequently settled there. In the 1990s civil war in Somali forced another wave of migration to Britain. Today, Somalis are one of the most misunderstood groups in the United Kingdom, despite their numbers.

Yet they have become integral to the capital’s poetry, literature, culture, and art. Warsan Shire, a British Somali talent born in Kenya, was named London’s first Young Poet Laureate in October 2013. The title includes a residency at the Houses of Parliament.

Just as Somali culture and identity grows and flourishes in new places, likewise, the British Somali population in London has developed with unique characteristics and complexities.

The Somalis in London report, part of a wider research project, Somalis in European Cities, aims to understand the views of British Somalis on issues vital to public life. These include identity, education, and political participation among others. The research has revealed a range of opinions on these matters and demonstrated the vibrancy and resilience of Somalis in London. Throughout the research we encountered many inspirational British Somalis, working hard for their community – and beyond – in voluntary organizations, supplementary education, and sport and youth activities.

Two factors were particularly striking. One was a tenacious devotion to community, marked by ongoing civic involvement in a time of economic austerity and cuts to spending on services. The second factor was the number of women involved in community initiatives. Our research goes some way to debunking the myth that Somali women are passive and silent. Women often step up, encouraging their children in school, and are visible in their communities and beyond. To quote one member who contributed to our research:

[People] get really confused sometimes because when they see Somali women covering, they associate us with the Asian culture, and then they see Somali women are very loud and boisterous. Then they are like, “Oh, okay, I was wrong about that.” I think [people] are very confused by the Somali community in general, ’cos sometimes they think you’re forced into marriage, and they ask, “Do you get arranged marriages?” and I’m like, “What are you talking about? We don’t do that!

These misperceptions are partly due to Somalis’ historical invisibility in ethnic monitoring processes throughout the UK. British Somalis often fall between the gaps of African and Muslim categories. Although country of birth data provides some insight into the size of the British Somali community, exact figures are difficult to ascertain due to the fact that there was no specific categorization of “British Somali” as an ethnic group in the 2011 Census.

Most attempts to classify Somalis muddle their nationality/ethnicity and religion/culture. Labeling a Somali “Black African” will obscure differences between Somalis and neighboring African countries in terms of culture, language, diet, dress, and religious practices. Being labeled as Muslim in contrast, ignores how British Somalis do not share language, diet, or dress with Asian and Arab Muslims who pray alongside them. This broad approach to monitoring categories has often resulted in the British Somali community’s experiences being overlooked, and we hope that the findings of this report go some way to highlighting the importance of capturing such data.

Some organizations are devising ways to learn about Somali life and build relationships with British Somali communities. Tower Hamlets Homes (THH), set up the Somali Tenants Engagement Project in April 2011. This initiative – for which THH should be commended – identified British Somali residents and gathered information on their needs and circumstances. THH was able to capture the unique experiences of their Somali residents.

Soon, all of London will get a chance to learn more about British Somalis. Kayd Arts’ annual Somali Week Festival occurs throughout the city from October 17 to 26. This festival showcases traditional and contemporary Somali art and culture, with events including poetry, literature, panel discussions, documentary film screenings, and music and theatre. It hosts artists, academics, and activists from London, the rest of the UK, and abroad. This year’s theme is “Imagination.” Examples of British Somalis’ contributions to London will also be showcased.

Sex education: What Nollywood and sermons don’t teach

(Pic: Flickr / Nollywood Artist)
(Pic: Flickr / Nollywood Artist)

Positive parenting had began to gain popularity among parents and teachers in the small Nigerian town of Sapele where I grew up, and my school was not going to be left behind.

So, every Valentine’s Day saw us assembled in our school hall to be treated to a film screening. Somehow, my teachers always managed to find the same kind of Nollywood story: good girls who kept themselves pure in the midst of the moral morass of youth and married handsome, wealthy men who loved them dearly for their virtue and would do anything to have them.  In the late 1990s, the whole film show business seemed like such a big deal. But did it occur to anybody to question the choice of Nollywood as a viable Sex Ed aid? I I don’t think so.

Before the film played, it was mandatory that we live through 30 minutes or so of reorientation. The big colour television, placed at the centre of our school hall, would be on, the blue screen waiting, while a teacher – preferably the most religious or the most willing/concerned – talked to us about our changing bodies. By an unspoken consensus, on days like this – on other days too, but especially on days like this –  everybody tried to avoid the use of certain words. And, standing in line, my breath held, my self-comportment overstretched, it was easy to understand why.

Those words, in their raw carnal forms, had terrible pitfalls. We had seen it happen many times; girls we knew, swallowed whole by the scotching intimacy of carnal words. Girls who knew about breasts and hips. Girls who we could tell, just by looking at them, that they were doing ‘it’. Girls who became pregnant. The general impression being that good girls just did not notice their bodies.

For the same reason that these words could just not be said, these films we saw were less about whatever narratives they managed to have and more about the overarching message. That narrative was: Good girls wait and are rewarded, bad girls end up with babies on their backs walking the streets looking lost. Good boys graduate, get great lives and have beautiful families, bad boys end up unfinished and angry at the world.

Then one year, our ‘exposed’ Home Economics teacher brought back a new movie Yellow Card (Zimbabwean) from one of her trips to Lagos. That film represents for me, to this day, a kind of epiphany.  At school that day, I saw a story that was by miles different, unnerving even, but possible. I saw young people who were preoccupied with sex but also preoccupied with education and careers. It showed them making mistakes but also it showed them trying to make better choices. And for showing this, that sex was not so much the problem as much as poor sexual choices were, for attempting to move the frame of conflicts to a flexible one, the whole positive parenting film show thing became suspect.  Our teachers feared we would become confused. And so, the whole film-screening campaign with its preemptive concern for possible life-altering choices was quietly shelved.

If campaigns to improve sexual and reproductive health education has done anything well in the last couple of decades, it is that it has increased the willingness of parents, schools and religious bodies to talk to about sexual and reproductive health. In communities like the one where I grew up, and perhaps communities like it mirrored all through Africa, this is how you mostly learn sex education: from well-meaning people in churches and schools who would designate whole programs to “talk to the young people about sex”, but deliberately neuter or thwart the message in the “best interests” of young people.

Recently, I attended a church program where the guest speaker, a woman from a religious NGO, insisted that “the computer age” was directly responsible for the proliferation of abortions in young girls. And as I sat there listening to her say these things in her confident, measured voice, I was not worried by the certainty of her illogic. It was the readiness, gratitude almost, with which the audience swallowed this rare information that worried me. The nature of information that was disseminated is problematic, perhaps enough to be counter-productive?

The statistics around abortion appear conflicting. Certain research shows that this conservative approach to sex education led to better sexual behaviour. Other research shows that it did not reduce the abortion rate. And that worse still, the numbers of unsafe abortions in countries like Nigeria are as high as ever. While this says nothing definitive about the challenges that apply to the methods of Sex Education currently practiced in Nigeria and other African countries, enough information exists that draws attention to the inadequacies of the approach.

From school lessons in the 1990s to school lessons now, SEX = SIN is the form of sex education that young people are getting, instead of the more pertinent ‘there are safe ways to have sex’. This is mostly because Nigeria, like much of Africa, is a highly religious space, where your Sunday School teacher most likely doubles as your concerned/willing school teacher, so there is the unavoidable problem of an overlap of the same kinds of sermonised sex education everywhere.

The dangers of going out to seek or buy protection can still seem as big and as real as the dangers of reckless, unsafe sex in certain communities. And this sermonised form of Sex Education which very often equates the emphasising of condom and contraceptive use as promoting irresponsibility, if anything, contributes to the entrenchment of conservative ideas in communities that are already too conservative.

Sex education is everywhere; on billboards, on TV, in churches, in schools, but it is still a long way from being about the simple and most basic thing: the right to protect yourself. It is yet to transcend religion or what I am willing to telling you. It is yet to be about life, about safety, about options.

Kechi Nomu writes from Warri, Nigeria. Her poems have appeared in Saraba Magazine and Brittle Paper.

Kenya: Putting an end to transactional sex and letting girls be girls

It was a Facebook message from Liz Moran at the Women’s Institute of Secondary Education and Research (Wiser) that prompted me to research and write this article.

Part of it read: “Many girls engage in transactional sex in order to pay school fees or buy sanitary pads resulting in some of the highest HIV rates in the country (38%). The barriers for female education are so strong that in 30 years, only one woman from the community had attended University.”

This is happening in Muhuru Bay, a town in the Nyanza Province of Kenya. It is situated on the banks of Lake Victoria, close to the Tanzanian border.

The facts haunted me. Young girls engage in sex with fishermen in order to pay for school fees or sanitary towels. And it gets worse: women fishmongers in the fishing communities commonly form relationships with fishermen to secure the rights to purchase the fish they catch and then sell them in the market. The sex exchange typically occurs in a hurried manner, often without preparation or protection. As it compromises their ability to practise safer sex, men and women in these fishing communities are at increased risk of HIV.

Given the nomadic nature of the fishing community here and a lack of education about HIV and Aids, it is thus not surprising that out of at least every ten people, about four of them are HIV positive. Recent figures from the Kenya National HIV and Aids Estimates say that Kenya has the fourth highest HIV prevalence in the world, with about 1.6 million people infected with the virus. Of these, an estimated 191 840 are children.

In the larger Lake Victoria region, it is also common for women and girls to have sex with fishermen to obtain food, or to get fish to sell in order to pay for medicine or school fees. Therefore, it is necessary to break this cycle by offering a solution to at least one of the challenges.

Wiser seems to have found a good one.

“We run an entirely free high school for girls in Muhuru Bay, a fishing village in rural Kenya,” Moran told me. “Girls here rarely complete secondary school. They are forced into marriages, become pregnant, drop out of school to enable their brothers to continue, suffer physical and psychological abuse, and have a general lack of support and positive female role models.”

Students at Wiser. (Pic: Supplied)
Students at Wiser. (Pic: Supplied)

In 2006, Dr Sherryl Broverman, co-founder of Wiser, discovered a note that was slipped under her door while she was in Muhuru Bay doing research. “Should I stop having sex with the man who is paying my school fees? I am afraid of getting Aids,” it read. The note was from a 14-year-old girl.

In 2007, Wiser was formed to empower young girls in Muhuru Bay through education. Here girls would be offered a chance to study for free as well as get hands-on skills in agriculture, reproductive health and engineering. The girls would be removed from the environment that predisposed them to health risks, lack of education and instead get a chance to be girls.

The Wiser school in Muhuru Bay provides clothes, sanitary pads, books, healthy food, supportive teachers, mosquito nets, and medicine. About 150 girls have gone through the school, and girls who are pregnant are also welcomed. The school offers counselling and psychosocial support for its students while also helping them realise their talents and leadership skills. According to Wiser and Kenya’s Ministry of Health, this region has the highest HIV, malaria and infant mortality rates in the country.

“Our maiden class graduated this year in March and all the 28 girls passed their final Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education and 17 have qualified for university,” said Moran. “We know that those are girls who will lead their families and communities. They are innovative – some are making solar powered items from recycled materials.”

Members of Wiser's Engineering Club. The girls have created flashlights with locally available materials which they hope to franchise. (Pic: Supplied)
Members of Wiser’s Engineering Club. The girls have created flashlights with locally available materials which they hope to franchise. (Pic: Supplied)

Evidently, Wiser has long been living up to this year’s International Day of the Girl Child theme, ‘Empowering Adolescent Girls: Ending the Cycle of Violence’. By creating a fee-free secondary school, the organisation is changing the notion of what is possible for girls in Muhuru Bay, and also ending the vicious cycle of transactional sex and gender-based violence in school.

“Before coming to Wiser, the girls were in schools where their teachers touched them inappropriately and others were raped. Due to this, some dropped out. Here, we take a deliberate initiative to protect the girls while in school and we minimise their time out of school as well,” Moran said.

Girls around the world still face discrimination simply because they are girls. As we mark International Day of the Girl Child on October 11, the reality is that there are those who may still have to trade their bodies for a pen, a book or a sanitary pad. Fortunately for the girls in Muhuru Bay, they have one less challenge to overcome. Their education is being catered for and they are gradually being empowered to make their own informed decisions.

Hopefully when the UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka marks the day at Unicef, she will challenge each and every one of us to empower our adolescent sisters. We may have resources that we can share to educate them. We may mentor them, we may share our experiences with them, so they could learn from us and us from them.

There is a need for a generation of young girls who are actively involved in their well-being and who are proactively taking steps to end the cycle of violence and inequality. And then, they need to carry it forward to those who come after them.

It is my hope that young girls across Africa will stop exchanging sex for any basic commodities, not merely because of the risk of HIV and Aids or pregnancy, but because they do not have to.

Eunice Kilonzo is a journalist in Kenya.

Travelling with the extra baggage of Ebola stigma

A woman passes a sign posted in an awareness campaign against the spread of Ebola in Freetown, Sierra Leone. (Pic: Reuters)
A woman passes a sign posted in an awareness campaign against the spread of Ebola in Freetown, Sierra Leone. (Pic: Reuters)

Upon landing at Kigali International Airport last month, I peered out the window and my eyes caught sight of an official clad in protective gear standing just under a sign that read ‘Arrivals: Ebola testing’. If I had ever been removed from what has been going on in my beloved Sierra Leone, it ended in this moment. Before my flight from Washington, I was informed that we would be screened upon arrival. And there it was. Even from the window of seat 16K, I could see the measures that had been put in place to protect the citizens of the country.

After disembarking the plane and entering the airport, we stood in a queue for about 10 minutes. I noticed a form that other passengers were filling out. I asked the young lady behind me if it was for everyone. She responded “Yes,” so I moved to the counter to complete mine. It asked: “In the past three weeks have you been in the following countries: Sierra Leone, Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, Senegal?” At that moment I felt a sense of solidarity first with Sierra Leoneans near and far, because sadly this too has become one of our realities. I also felt isolation because my entry, identity and existence were being sanctioned and questioned by a customs form. A customs form at which other travellers would not cringe; they don’t have blood from Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea. Even if I don’t explain to you what happened next, you would still be able to surmise what would occur naturally as a Sierra Leonean-American woman with Sierra Leonean entry and departure stamps in her US passport. As I continued filling out the form, I checked “No” on the form because the truth was I hadn’t been to Sierra Leone in the past three weeks.

I calculated: three weeks equals 21 days. Twenty one is the magic number that many African countries and people all over the world will use to promote the stigmatisation of people from Ebola-hit countries, or with any relations to them. It’s the number that would decide your fate when attempting to enter another country. It takes up to 21 days for the deadly Ebola virus to manifest itself in symptoms after one has been exposed. The incubation period, they call it.

No, I haven’t been in Sierra Leone in the past 21 days. Not physically. But in the past 21 days, my thoughts have been there. My mind has raced incessantly and my heart has jumped at the numbers. My soul has cringed at flaws that have been illustrated by this epidemic in Sierra Leone. For more than 21 days, I have certainly felt helpless.

But this customs officer didn’t exactly know how I or other Sierra Leoneans have felt for the past few months. As he attempted to look for a clear page to add the Rwanda entry stamp, he came across my Sierra Leonean visa page. He glanced at my passport and the stamps for my entries to Sierra Leone, the most recent being December 2013 to January 2014. I watched his eyes widen slightly as he turned the pages and I anticipated the questioning. It took a while for him to gather his thoughts and ask the question. “Are you coming from the United States?” Obviously, I thought to myself. “When last have you traveled to Sierra Leone?” Didn’t you already see the stamps? “What was the last date you left Sierra Leone?” I responded “January 10, 2014. And when I left, this wasn’t a problem”.

Some countries have banned the entry of citizens and passengers arriving from Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia – nations that have been hit the hardest by the latest Ebola outbreak. I understand caution but paranoia and, consequently, stigmatisation, are not the cures to this disease. To see a Sierra Leonean visa in my passport evidently put the official on high alert. The realisation that I could somehow be considered a ‘risk’ – not just to this man but to his country – despite the evidence before him made me feel small.

He stared at me a bit longer, as if trying to gauge whether the words I uttered were the truth. Then he asked me for my point of contact. I gave him that information. He made the decision not to call or do whatever he had considering doing. I smiled because even in the face of this ugly stigma and the horror that we know as Ebola in Sierra Leone, I am still proudly a “Salone Titi.” I thanked him, retrieved my passport, and rolled my hand luggage to begin my experience as a Sierra Leonean-American woman in Rwanda.

 Bintu Musa is a globetrotting educator and writer. She is currently lecturing at Rwanda Tourism University College as a Fulbright Scholar. She blogs at Bee’s Backseat