Entrepreneurs

Hacking out a living in a developing country is no easy task—if you are lucky enough that personal circumstances do not complicate it, macro-economic trends probably do. Nevertheless, I have seen some inspiring examples of people taking their skills, talents, and assistance and turning them into business.

These are some of them.

Rita runs her dress-making business from the former office of my NGO. Under the old PARED masthead are wide-flung barn doors that open her workshop: a set of tables, six Chinese manual sewing machines with stools, and 50 different posters of dress, outfit and clothing style collections. After scraping together enough money for technical training in Kumasi, she can reproduce any of the over 500 styles with little more than a glance at them—and make you a purse from the fabric fragments to boot. Rita works 7 days a week, 51 weeks a year when allowing for funerals, weddings, and the annual bout of malaria. She also trains 4-6 apprentice seamstresses, which she says she is thankful for “because otherwise I would have no friends”. Rita's work is consistent and busy—and despite struggling slightly to pay rising utility bills, her business appears to be taking off. It's easy to see why: Rita is easy company, and a good tailor to boot.

Bobobo's is situated across the Bolga road from a ritzy gas station in Tamale, but their products can be found in stores along the main drag. Through a grant from the French development agency, the women of Bobobo's buy organic, ethical-cooperative-farmed mangoes from the Integrated Tamale Fruit Company (a current partner of EWB) for solar-drying and packaging. The fruit leather is sinfully delicious, and it is one of the few places to buy any sort of dried fruit in the Northern Region at all. The low cost and maintenance of the solar dryer has allowed them to branch into drying bananas, coconut, tomatoes, ginger and hot pepper, and revenue from these sales is directed into the procurement of a juicing facility to expand their product line. Finding this place was a boon to me in the North, where fruit is seasonal to the extreme. The fact that eating dried mangoes can be virtually pesticide-, emissions-, cruelty- and guilt-free is an added bonus.

Adoko can be found by locating the bobbing, roaming Rasta hat in the Tamale Metromass bus station. A musician from Bolgatanga, he learned the trade of carving wooden toys from the same man who taught him to play the guitar. Smiling warmly and flipping the tiny acrobats that spin through his handiwork, he's a calm centre of the swirling hurricane of humanity that is the permanent weather condition of the station. For Ghc1.50, the toys are meant to bridge the gap in income between gigs with his band—after all, he said, he learned to make them so he could stay away from hard labour in construction gangs, and still have the energy (and undamaged fingers) to play at night. Every time I see him, there is a new invitation to a new gig; I have yet to see if his playing matches his handiwork.

Many people believe that the road to sustainable development is paved with economics instead of good intentions. EWB partners such as the Rural Enterprise Project are making leaps and bounds to help take small business into the smaller towns of the North, and help them succeed—but it is nice to see that even without REP, some people are taking care of business.