Where do our donations go?
The Christian Children's Fund of Canada, Ghana Country Office, is working with five Partners in eight districts in Northern Ghana. Parents of sponsored children and other community members have been organized into groups to assist them improve their livelihoods and better care of their children with skills training and Micro Enterprise/Micro Credit (MED). The Ghana MED Program currently has 2,180 clients of whom 80% (1,744) are women.
Economic Activities
The main economic activities of rural women in northern Ghana are sheabutter processing, groundnuts oil extraction, rice processing, trading and foodstuff retailing. Sheabutter processing dominates all economic activities.
Clients process sheabutter through out the year. However the shea tree bears fruits once a year. The shea tree grows naturally in the savannah region of northern Ghana. The shea is the main cash crop of Northern Ghana. However the industry has not been developed with better infrastructure, technology, reliable markets, and good prices. The drudgery of processing is still high and capital intensive. Women process in groups under trees. The processing goes through several stages with water and boiled for the butter to be extracted
Sheabutter has several uses. It is used for food, as an herb for pharmaceuticals and cosmetics.
Present Financial Needs
Sheabutter processing groups are financially constrained to provide a conducive environment for processing, improved equipment and capital to buy nuts during the harvesting season at low prices to store and process through out the year. Each Processing Center will require$21,430 (CAD) to construct one Processing Centre.CCFC's five partners could each construct one Processing Centre to serve all communities to begin with, if there are external buyers who can regularly buy in large quantities.
In addition seed capital of $6,857 (CAD) is needed to buy sheanuts for each Processing Centre.
Securing A Market
Marketing sheabutter is a major constraint for the MED women. Within the local market, there are very few reliable buyers. Most buyers, especially the exporters, exploit the women by buying on credit and pay only when they receive payments from their buyers. These women are also cheated by middlemen/agents by reducing the prices and profits. As a result there is still high poverty among families. If women can export the sheabutter directly it would make appreciable profits and reduce poverty among MED clients and communities as a whole.
Women have been trained to produce quality butter to meet international standards, but need a consistent market for the food, cosmetics or pharmaceuticals industries. This will make a difference in the lives of women inCCFC/Partner operational communities.
Women have the capacity to produce 20 metric tones within three weeks ifCCFC were able to support them with the initial capital to buy sheanuts. Currently loan capitals range from $86 - $286 (CAD) per client.
It takes a woman three days after the nuts have been parboiled and dried, to produce 80 kilos of sheanuts, going through all these processes - washing to dry for one hour, pick bad nuts, crush, roast, mill, knead, extract oil and solidify oil for packaging for sales.
The Christian Children's Fund of Canada, Ghana Country Office, is working with five Partners in eight districts in Northern Ghana. Parents of sponsored children and other community members have been organized into groups to assist them improve their livelihoods and better care of their children with skills training and Micro Enterprise/Micro Credit (MED). The Ghana MED Program currently has 2,180 clients of whom 80% (1,744) are women.
Economic Activities
The main economic activities of rural women in northern Ghana are sheabutter processing, groundnuts oil extraction, rice processing, trading and foodstuff retailing. Sheabutter processing dominates all economic activities.
Clients process sheabutter through out the year. However the shea tree bears fruits once a year. The shea tree grows naturally in the savannah region of northern Ghana. The shea is the main cash crop of Northern Ghana. However the industry has not been developed with better infrastructure, technology, reliable markets, and good prices. The drudgery of processing is still high and capital intensive. Women process in groups under trees. The processing goes through several stages with water and boiled for the butter to be extracted
Sheabutter has several uses. It is used for food, as an herb for pharmaceuticals and cosmetics.
Present Financial Needs
Sheabutter processing groups are financially constrained to provide a conducive environment for processing, improved equipment and capital to buy nuts during the harvesting season at low prices to store and process through out the year. Each Processing Center will require$21,430 (CAD) to construct one Processing Centre.CCFC's five partners could each construct one Processing Centre to serve all communities to begin with, if there are external buyers who can regularly buy in large quantities.
In addition seed capital of $6,857 (CAD) is needed to buy sheanuts for each Processing Centre.
Securing A Market
Marketing sheabutter is a major constraint for the MED women. Within the local market, there are very few reliable buyers. Most buyers, especially the exporters, exploit the women by buying on credit and pay only when they receive payments from their buyers. These women are also cheated by middlemen/agents by reducing the prices and profits. As a result there is still high poverty among families. If women can export the sheabutter directly it would make appreciable profits and reduce poverty among MED clients and communities as a whole.
Women have been trained to produce quality butter to meet international standards, but need a consistent market for the food, cosmetics or pharmaceuticals industries. This will make a difference in the lives of women inCCFC/Partner operational communities.
Women have the capacity to produce 20 metric tones within three weeks ifCCFC were able to support them with the initial capital to buy sheanuts. Currently loan capitals range from $86 - $286 (CAD) per client.
It takes a woman three days after the nuts have been parboiled and dried, to produce 80 kilos of sheanuts, going through all these processes - washing to dry for one hour, pick bad nuts, crush, roast, mill, knead, extract oil and solidify oil for packaging for sales.
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