Food safety culture from the ground up: a Nigerian sugar company's journey

Enhancing Rural Women’s Access to Relevant Knowledge, Assets, Capacities and Livelihood Strategies

Written by Christiana Charles-Iyoha

 The plight of women as an economically, socially and politically disenfranchised community in Africa is aptly summed up by Mzee Mwalimu Julius Nyerere when he noted that “Women in Africa toil all their lives on land that they do not own, to produce what they do not control and at the end of a marriage through divorce or death, they can be sent away empty handed”.

Women as a group account for over 70% of people living in poverty particularly in developing and least developed economies and 50% of the populace worldwide generally.  In Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, women form nearly 50% of a population that is under very heavy pressures from a social organizational pattern that is inherently unprepared for sustainable development and the socio-economic transformation of the poor, vulnerable and marginalized peoples, largely located in the rural areas and peri-urban areas.

Women’s poverty is further heightened by limited or lack of access to productive resources.  The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) recently noted that in the rural areas where the majority of the world’s hungry live, women and girls produce most of the food consumed locally.  Their contribution could be far greater if they had equal access to essential resources and services, including information.  Rural women have even less access to information and technologies than men and are thus at a disadvantage when it comes to making informed choices about what to produce and how best to market their products.  Lack of information also limits their influence in their communities and their ability to participate in decision-making.

Issues of access to productive resources often evoke issues of power relations and marginalisation.  Women, an already excluded class by reason of customary practices and religious practices that locate women in families as legal minors subject to the authority of either the father or the husband in the private sphere are further   excluded from accessing productive resources, usually located in the public sphere.  Patricia McFadden captures this scenario aptly    noting that “Through rituals and practices that have become euphemistically understood as 'cultural' and 'traditional', women's capacities and abilities to labour and to reproduce are institutionalized in the patriarchal family as the private property of their fathers and husbands”.

Emerging from women’s lack of access to productive resources are far reaching poverty implications as they have to face a narrower choice of economic options including engagement in high risk behaviour such as vulnerability to being trafficked for forced labor or prostitution, involvement in the informal sector with daily harassments, slave labor in export processing zones and involvement in the global sex tourism industry as victims or perpetrators of the crime against women and humanity.

Wanted, Grown, Growing and Alive: Forests

Written by Christiana Charles-Iyoha

https://www.pexels.com/search/tree/

Forests management and conservation remains for now the most cost effective means of managing the effects of greenhouse gas emissions on the environment.  Significantly, tropical forests which are globally acclaimed to absorb nearly a fifth of carbon emissions released by fossil fuels each year (Nature, February 2009) store much more carbon than they produce in biomass or soil. These same forests also cool the atmosphere by putting moisture into the atmosphere through evapotranspiration (See the Annual State of the World's Forests).  Sometimes referred to as Africa's Carbon Sink, Africa's tropical forests though the most productive "carbon sinks" also play a vital role in regulating both temperature and rainfall, critical factors in Africa’s 90% rain fed subsistence agriculture that employs about 60% of the population in addition to providing staple food for the population as well as cash crops for export.

This article addresses the life threatening issue of deforestation in Africa on account of logging timber for export, conversion of tropical forests to agricultural land, mining housing and industrialisation.

How to Mobilize Resources for Financial Sustainability: The Business Approach to NGO Management

Written by Christiana Charles-Iyoha

Non governmental organizations are non profit organizations that most often are donor dependent. Projects, staffing, quality office space and equipment are largely dependent on the generosity of donors and where donor generosity stops, the life span of the NGO most probably comes to an end. Having worked in the sector for close on twenty five years, I have seen many great NGOs with huge potentials for contributing immensely to human, national and global development close shop because they could no longer access donor funds, a function of donor fatigue coupled with dwindling AID and donor funding. This calls for creative means of achieving financial sustainability in the sector so that in the long run, NGOs can exist without donor support. A rather tall dream for people and organizations who are known as non profits, unschooled in raising cash flow from assets because they have always being schooled in raising grants and donations. Though a rather tall dream, what is required is a mental and institutional paradigm shift from donor dependence to organisation’s cash flow from assets dependence implying that non profit organizations must learn to build assets. This is critical because grants will continue to dwindle and donor fatigue will increase. Secondly, you won’t need to work at pleasing donors; conform to their agenda to work at their pace at the risk of displeasing your constituency. You will work at your own pace, follow your own agenda and actually implement projects that are relevant to the needs of the constituency or communities you serve.

Assets however do not drop from the sky. Money is required to build and maintain assets. How then do organizations who do not earn income from business transactions suddenly acquire assets?  Several ways if you adopt the business approach to NGO management.  Though NGOs are non profits, they can also participate in profit making ventures that earn income for the organization and not the Trustees of the organization. Therefore NGOs should actively engage in business activities that do not detract from the vision of the organization but earn and adds income to the organization. This way, NGOs become social enterprises that both serve their constituencies’ interests as well as generate income to remain afloat in providing social development services.

How to Set Up a Cooperative Society in Nigeria

Written By Christiana Charles-Iyoha 

 A co-operative is an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise. (www.ica.coop).

 There are different types of cooperatives and they include:

1.  Primary cooperatives    - comprise natural persons.

2. Secondary cooperatives – group of cooperatives in a state, for example all the cooperatives in Lagos State under an umbrella.

3. Tertiary Cooperatives – the umbrella organization of cooperatives in a country for example, the Cooperative Federation of Nigeria

Primary cooperatives are further sub classified into:

• Multipurpose – is more of a group of companies. They are licensed to invest in any sector of the economy as well as operate as thrift and savings. (I suggest you go for multipurpose so you can carry out practically every legal activity within this platform).

• Thrift and Savings – mobilize savings within members and give loans to members. Some are quite daring as they give loans to non members at higher interest rates all in an attempt to increase the revenue base of the cooperative.

• Agricultural – limited to only agriculture. Usually a group or groups of farmers who come together to leverage agricultural loans.

• Housing – limited to providing housing at affordable rates to members.

Steps

1. The cooperative society must have at least ten or more natural persons as members.  XYZ that could be you or any interested person plus nine other members for a start. 

2. The cooperative society must have a name, for example Premium Thrift and Savings Cooperative; the Billionaires Multipurpose Cooperative

3. The cooperative society must write a letter of invitation for inauguration to the relevant cooperative office in your area.  Thereafter, officers from the Cooperative Area Office will visit your office for the inauguration, depending on the agreed time and date. All members of the cooperative especially the officers to be elected should be at the meeting.  In addition to being inaugurated, the members will be educated on how to run a cooperative.

Nigeria’s Informal Financial Services Sector

Written by Christiana Charles-Iyoha

Nigeria’s informal financial services sector is serviced and fuelled by micro enterprises, micro entrepreneurs in the informal sector as well as unemployed citizens who attempt either saving up or borrowing micro start up capital through this service; maintaining this service to both build up operating capital and access microcredit when the need arises. However, insurance is a critical missing aspect in this financial services sector. Micro businesses like medium and macro businesses also suffer unforeseen challenges such as fire incidents, loss of goods, seizure of goods, accidents, robbery, etc.

The informal sector is the engine of economic growth, an increasing driver of economic development. An analysis of economic activities in the informal sector indicates sale of food (raw food materials); cooked food (mama puts including fruits, vegetables, spices, oils, etc); cooking utensils, soaps, building materials, cafes, recharge cards, car parks, mechanics, tailors, fabric merchants, drivers, okada, artisans, schools, coaching activities, alajo, and a host of other micro economic activities.

The informal financial services sector mirrors a people’s determination to access financial services against all odds. Largely micro, the informal financial services sector proliferates cities, towns, villages, creeks and just anywhere you find a commune of Nigerians and anyone living amongst them.

Mercy Drops: Gift of God Part 1

kuyoyou@yahoo.comMercy Drops: Gift of God Part 1