Fair Trade Africa News
In our last edition of the newsletter, we mentioned the launch of the Fair Trade Africa website.
We have selected some short articles from the news section of the new website for your interest...
PREMIUM INVESTMENT COMBATTING CHILD LABOUR
Cocoa small producer Kavokiva stepped up its battle against child labour in Didibobly, an isolated area without roads or schools in Ivory Coast. The Joint Body of the cooperative decided to invest the Fairtrade Premium in building three classrooms and houses for teachers, ensuring basic education to local children by January 2012.
A local representative of the government attended the first-stone-ceremony: ‘I decided to drive here – it took me 3 hours covering only 50km – to show my support for this initiative. We have to send our children to school, not only boys but also girls.’ She also promised to return once the school is up and running.
During the ceremony a second Fairtrade Premium project was launched. Kavokiva will set up its own insurance policy, reaching out to over 50.000 farmers. The cooperative will also focus more on preventive campaigns against malaria and HIV/AIDS.
AFRICA’S FIRST MICROFINANCE FUND FOR FAIRTRADE FARMERS
Fairtrade farmers across Africa will soon have access to a new microfinance fund which only supports fair trade and organic farmers across the continent. The European Investment Bank teamed up with a number of development bodies, social investors and microfinance service providers to set up this specialist rural microfinance fund. Currently, FEFISOL (the European Solidarity Financing Fund for Africa) amounts to 15 million euro but is planned to double in size by 2013.
The microfinance fund will help producer organisations in rural, remote area improve the quality and development of their activities.
For more information, please click here.
While South Africa recently has been rocked by a wave of strikes during the annual wage negotiations, workers at Fairtrade farm Koopmanskloof were satisfied with the outcome of their salary discussions. The winery from Stellenbosch agreed to increase worker’s wages with 6.9%. Initially, the workers union asked for a 7% increase but both parties agreed that the 0.1% would be invested in a new provident fund.
‘Koopmanskloof is one of the first farms to set up such a fund for its workers’, explains Peter Titus, Fairtrade Officer for the organisation. ‘From September onwards the initiative will help make retirement more bearable for our workers.’
Fairtrade has helped in different ways to ensure the negotiations ran justly. As a Fairtrade requirement, representatives of the Workers Committee and the Joint Body took part in the negotiations. And they were prepared for the task as they had previously attended training workshops on salary negotiations set up jointly by the Association of Fairness in Trade and Fairtrade.
