The enterprises are spearheaded by CAMFED Association members— young African women educated with CAMFED support — who are reinvesting profits into their communities to support more girls through school.
This exciting pilot scheme will secure internationally recognized Fairtrade certification of shea butter — a natural ingredient widely used in beauty products — enabling the female producers to assure customers of high quality and ethical standards. The enterprises will benefit from an assured pricing scheme, which helps businesses weather volatile market conditions and plan ahead for the future. The Fairtrade scheme also supports farmers to adopt sustainable farming methods and enables investment in long term solutions in the face of climate change.
The enterprises involved operate with sustainability and women’s empowerment at their heart, providing employment and training for women in low-income communities.
Aside from the 10 permanent staff that are employed, I also work with 500 women in 10 communities around this area to improve their livelihoods.
Ayisha Fuseini, CAMFED Association member and Shea Butter Entrepreneur
Obtaining Fairtrade certification is a fantastic opportunity for our young women entrepreneurs to meet growing commercial demand for shea butter and access exciting new business opportunities.
The partnership will support approximately 700 more shea butter producers to meet Fairtrade standards and potentially unlock education opportunities for thousands of children over the next 10 years, via support from the Waterloo Foundation.
Fairtrade Fortnight runs from 21 February-6 March, encouraging the public to get behind Fairtrade so that farmers in low-income countries can benefit from fairer prices, trading practices and the resources needed to tackle climate change.
“Our focus is to empower women who are into shea butter, and with the profit that they get, they use it to support their families and their kids in school. Indeed, people were not believing in the idea of a woman setting up a business. I now encourage the youth, especially women, to take the challenge of starting their own businesses.”
— Ayisha Fuseini, CEO and Founder of Asheba Enterprise, one of the social enterprises participating in this initiative.
Read Ayisha's story
Citi TV, one of Ghana’s leading television channels, is celebrating young women entrepreneurs through a series of interviews on its popular Breakfast Daily show. In the most recent, CAMFED Association members and business owners, Martha Fanny Gaisie and Mavis Aboko, shared their experience of entrepreneurship, its benefits to them as individuals, as well as its positive impact on their wider communities.
The Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) and CAMFED have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to provide training and technical support for young female entrepreneurs in Ghana. The MoU is will help young women to grow their businesses, register their products and fulfil regulatory requirements.
In this country there are so many unemployed young people, so when I started university I was already thinking of business ideas. I didn’t want to complete my studies and find myself without opportunities, and getting into entrepreneurship also meant I could pursue something I was really passionate about. I started my groundnut processing business, called Influx Groundnuts Products, in January 2019.
ahmad knight $3.5
John Lewis £120
Michael Boreham £26.2
Michael Boreham £7.5
Danielle Kraaijvanger $37.1
Patricia Ingram $106
JoAnn Jacobs $52.9
Stephanie Gonzales £7.5
Stephanie Gonzales £10.6
Susanna Tarjan $21.4
