|
|
Microenterprises in the Comoros, creators of rural employment
In the Comoros archipelago, jobs are scarce and income opportunities
limited, while high population densities – more than 400 people per
square kilometre – limit access to arable land. All these difficulties
have led nearly 15 per cent of the population to emigrate
abroad. In such conditions, a spirit of enterprise and innovation
are major advantages, and microenterprises represent one of the rare
sources of possible rural employment.
Solidarity and mutual aid, typical features of Comorian society, are
still vital. For example, it was primarily to help one another that
ten women from Ongoujou village on Nzwani Island decided to band together
in a group to develop poultry production and market gardening. “The
first aim was to create a common fund for mutual aid and solidarity,”
explains Roukia Soilih, the president. “It started out as a market
gardening and food crop association. Then we heard about a project
supporting economic grass-roots initiatives [the AIEB project] and
we decided to turn our association
into an enterprise.”
The members of the Ongoujou group are among the 880 microentrepreneurs
supported through the AIEB project, funded by IFAD from 1997 to 2004
with the aim of promoting microenterprises in rural areas by providing
training and access to credit for the most disadvantaged inhabitants.
The project was also responsible for the establishment of the Comoros
Savings and Credit Associations (MECKs), which are now indispensable
institutions in the country’s microfinance sector. The associations
have a capital of 7.6 billion Comorian francs, the equivalent
of US$20.4 million, in savings, and in 2006 they granted loans
for a total of 4.8 billion Comorian francs, or US$10.9 million.
“The project gave us the chance to get training in poultry-keeping,
and we decided to combine livestock with our market gardening activities
to generate income for our families,” continues Roukia Soilih. In
spite of recent difficulties connected with the health of their chickens,
she feels satisfied with the results. “Before, you couldn’t find
eggs in the village. Today we sell them in the market a few kilometres
from here and people come to buy them directly from our group. Our
children’s nutrition has got better, and best of all we don’t have
to ask our husbands for money.”
Made-to-measure services
The Ongoujou group has benefited from the whole range of support
services for enterprises provided by the AIEB project, from training
(literacy, accounting, management, technology) to access to credit.
However, the services were made to measure according to needs identified
jointly with the entrepreneurs. Garage mechanics from Fomboni on
Njazidja, for example, had especially expressed a need for really
good training, which enabled them to improve the quality of their
work and expand their clientele. Today they are ready to take the
next step and take out a loan to purchase the equipment they lack.
Mohamed Djafar, one of the cofounders and mechanics of the garage,
talks of the difficulties they are facing: “Our income isn’t high
enough to make our work really profitable. We’d have to just about
double our turnover, which is impossible while we don’t have the
right equipment. Unfortunately, the delivery time is longer than
the repayment time, which makes getting a loan practically impossible.”
As the project has closed, they themselves have to find a way of
expanding their activities and negotiating a suitable financial product
directly with the MECKs.
In the meantime, the mechanics depend on traditional family solidarity
to make ends meet. “When we don’t have anything,” Mohamed Djafar explains
with a smile, “we can always go to a sister or an aunt to eat.”
| The project’s big lesson: it is better to support local
initiatives than activities starting up from nothing |
The AIEB project was based on a model that gave priority
to the creation of microenterprises. This approach very quickly
proved obsolete, since it favoured clientelism and provided
no assurance of the sustainability of initiatives. Very few
of the 20 enterprises supported between 1997 and 1999 have
survived.
In 2000, a group of experts from the Government of the Comoros, IFAD and the
United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) decided to rectify the situation
by redirecting the project’s support to existing rural microenterprises, rather
than promoting the creation of new ones.
This approach had the advantage of supporting people who had already started
an economic activity and therefore already had experience of how the enterprise
worked in its various aspects, such as the supply of raw materials, processing
and marketing. They knew the risks of the trade and had shown a strong spirit
of entrepreneurship, so that they deserved support to enable them to overcome
their difficulties and develop their activities.
“This reorientation allowed a fresh start to be made, leading to an exponential
development of the AIEB project activities, while enabling the project to achieve
and even exceed its objectives,” stated Sabit Ali Ferouse, AIEB Project Manager
between 2001 and 2004, when the project was closed.
During 2003, through an interesting cross-pollination between projects, the AIEB
project benefited from the experience of the Rural
Small and Microenterprise Promotion Project (PPPMER) in Rwanda, which was
carrying out similar activities.
Benoît Thierry, who was then supervisor of the two projects on behalf of UNOPS,
states: “I thought the Comorians could learn from the Rwandans, who were setting
up their own microenterprise project. The two project teams met, and that is
how the AIEB project followed the example of the PPPMER and developed a support
programme for young people through apprenticeships and a network of enterprise
federations created in order to make the services’ activities sustainable.
These two successful experiments continue to inspire operations
to develop microenterprises in the Indian Ocean subregion. For
example, they are at present providing a basis for development
of the Programme of Support for Rural Microenterprise Poles and
Regional Economies (PROSPERER) in the highlands of Madagascar. |
Source: IFAD
email this article
|
|
