Wed, 30 Apr 2008

Helping Africa from the bottom up

By Bernhard Steiner

STUTTGART (NNA) – Africa is one of the losers of globalisation: millions of people, including four million children, starve to death each year. Its share of world trade has shrunk from 7.4 to two percent, life expectancy lags 20 years behind Europe and up to 50 percent of the population cannot read or write.

These were the figures quoted by Wilhelm Neurohr, one of the co-founders of the Avenir association, at an event in Stuttgart, which included a talk entitled “Can Africa still be saved?”, to introduce a project which the association supports in Togo.

Events like the recent EU “Africa summit” did not do much to change a great deal with regard to these shocking statistics, Neurohr said. They were more about preserving own trade and raw material interest with which the earnings and existential foundations of the rural population on the African continent were being destroyed. The real problems were not being tackled.

It was not the monetary transfers so euphemistically called “development aid” going into the coffers of corrupt dictators which led to real progress for the poverty-stricken general population – of whom 120,000 people sought their salvation in Europe each year – but the small, sustainable projects based on partnership and supported by personal initiative which aimed to help people to help themselves. It was in this context that the Togo project of the civil society initiative Avenir had to be seen.

Dodji Kpaleté from Togo, founder and project manager of the initiative, then reported about the current situation of the project. Dodji, who previously worked in a textile enterprise and a brewery as an accountant, some years ago bought a piece of land in Adétikopé north of the capital Lomé. Circumstances led to a meeting with Mechthild Gruner–Neurohr, and with other friends in Germany they founded the Avenir association.

The objectives of the association are to support organic agriculture and thus healthy nutrition as well as initiating German-Togolese social and cultural projects, above all for the rural village population.

In 2001, the association started to develop a socio-cultural project on the then three hectares of land: a pineapple farm, a fruit plantation (oranges, lemons, grapefruit), an organic vegetable garden and animal rearing (pigs, goats, sheep, chickens, ducks, rabbits).

The project has in the meantime expanded to ten hectares and the first pineapple harvest and exports to Europe of dried pineapple were a success. Working together with a company called Setrapal, the dried pineapples were exported for sale in European organic shops. Fruit not destined for export is sold in local markets.

Since the village had not until then had a functioning school, it was possible with the aid of donations and the first income from sales to build a kindergarten for almost 40 children from the surrounding villages and to train and provide financial support for a kindergarten teacher.

Then a school was build in which 20 children in classes 1 and 2 have been taught by an experienced teacher since 2006. Furthermore, a new house has also been built on the land to provide accommodation for the people working on the pineapple plantation and their families.

First profits are also coming in from a cafe which the Gnemissoum women’s group is running in Lomé. A loan from the GLS Bank helped to finance the cafe. The money from the cafe also goes towards the initiative, the plan being to finance an aids project once the loan has been repaid and to create the basis for a micro-credit fund.

The initiative builds on the active collaboration of the village people, particularly the women who play a vital role in such projects in Africa. The hope is that similar projects can be realised on the basis of local initiative with support from Germany.

In the most recent development, attempts are currently underway to improve the pump system with the help of solar cells – but most of the money for that is still lacking. Also still at the planning stage is a medical centre for the surrounding villages.

The Avenir association currently has 30 members who are always pleased, of course, to receive additional support for their work.

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Link: www.avenir-togo.de/index.htm

Item: 080430-01EN Date: 30 April 2008

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