Empowering African Communities to Achieve Their Financial Dreams
Global Brigades Launches Microfinance Brigades in Ghana
“It is not that we are trapped in poverty,” said Mr. Morgan, “it is that we do not have access to the financial services that the rest of the world has. Without these, we cannot progress. Without these we cannot grow our businesses, our ideas or our dreams.” Mr. Morgan is not the only passionate and eloquent member of Ekumfi Ekotsi, a village that sits along the main road to Accra, Ghana’s capital city. He is, however, one of the strongest economic leaders of the community. He currently runs his own farm, growing cassava, corn, plantains and pineapple, but is greatly challenged by inadequate and inconsistent rainfall and his inability to access a loan for irrigation. He is not alone. All of Ekumfi Ekotsi shares in his sentiment. “We need access to credit. It is that simple,” said one of the community’s head chiefs. “Then we can grow our community, create our own jobs and give the youth of Ekumfi Ekotsi a livelihood—a reason to stay here and help us develop.”
When the Global Brigades Ireland team arrived in Ekumfi Ekotsi on March 11, it was not only to work with the community to address these issues, but also to kick off Global Brigades in Ghana. This was our first project ever! And wow, what a kickoff they received. They were greeted from the bus with drumming, dancing, singing and the applause of children and adults from across the community. Both the students and the community knew that these 10 days were a unique opportunity for everyone involved. So we set to work developing business and financial services with the community.
GB Ireland got everything started by supporting the community to develop one of its bee-keeping cooperatives and establishing a long-desired cassava processing business that will benefit the whole community. The core of the project came with a series of business development workshops, financial literacy lectures and finally a strong capital investment into the projects. GB Ireland in only 10 days had begun to develop the financial services for Ekumfi Ekotsi that Mr. Morgan had asked for, and to create the space for locals to grow their businesses and their financial dreams.
The following 10 days, the London Business School picked up where GB Ireland left off. With a team full of high level business consultants, LBS was able to add immense value to the bee-keeping and cassava processing businesses and finalize the cooperative structure such that the entire community could profit as early as the end of 2011. Through discussions with the government and by shadowing local microfinance institutions (as seen below collecting loan repayments in the local market), LBS was also able get a clear understanding of the current financial services available to local communities in order to best address the challenges Ekumfi Ekotsi faces. In the end, they developed a system through which the profits from cassava processing would be re-invested into community business ideas, such as irrigation of the surrounding lands. To set the example and demonstrate the value of irrigation, LBS also left behind the capital to launch a pilot irrigation project in Ekumfi Ekotsi which will pump water to several acres of land and provide food for local consumption and regional export.
In the end, Ekumfi Ekotsi now has a prosperous bee-keeping cooperative, a community-run cassava processing machine, a pilot irrigation project and a community-funded account to provide seed capital for future business ideas and sustain the work that we have done for years to come. Ekumfi Ekotsi asked that Global Brigades brings more students to their community and others around the area to help develop systems for community members to access capital, so we invite each of you to come to Ghana to help with this project.
For more information about Microfinance Brigades program details or an itinerary for our Ghana trips, click here. You can also contact Orion Haas at orion@globalbrigades.org with any questions or to get involved. Ghana is open to all international students, so come be a part of it!
