Motivate and train your employees and prepare them to help you grow your business.

I have been working with women in rural Ghana for over 26 years, and I believe that women’s poverty can be solved by women themselves. In Northern Ghana, everyone knows how to make shea butter. So when I asked women in rural areas for ideas on how to get out of poverty, this was the product they all came up with.

The first problem with using shea butter produced by women themselves was that it wasn’t very high quality. To compete in a world market, we had to train our women employees to produce better quality shea butter and to package it attractively. We only had eight staff so we designed very practical training with lots of pictures to enable the more than 700 women in our association who are almost completely illiterate to understand the material.

I asked the Japan International Cooperation Agency for help. A team of their experts and the research department of the University of Development Studies in Tamale produced a training manual which we use for the women who pick the shea nuts, and those who make the butter. We were also recommended to improve the processing sites.

The women employees then formed an association with chapters in several villages. Some of the women were also shown how to train new members of the PagSung (‘ideal woman’) Shea Nut Pickers and Shea Butter Processors Association. A sponsor paid for me and some of the women to visit the Self Employed Women’s Association in India, where we learned a lot about building a rural business.

At first we sold our shea butter in open baskets to local markets; but we needed better packaging to sell our butter abroad. We tried lots of different ways before deciding to pack the butter in transparent boxes of 20 kilos. The first improved shea butter we produced not only received positive feedback but also sold at a higher price. That day was the ‘so-we-can-make-it’ day.

Now we are also making soap from the shea butter which brings in even more money. We make all different kinds of soaps, including baobab, moringa, henna, neem (some of the older women produce neem oil) and even local potash black soap.

Many of the women realized that their illiteracy made it difficult for them to measure things correctly. So we marked the containers. But we have also introduced literacy classes. Now we need proper funding for learning materials and to pay teachers. If women learn to read and write in their own language, they will be able to document their rich experiences. Being literate will also help them with their simple book-keeping. The women have so much to share about life, especially about how to cope with stress in time of hardship.

At the beginning, each community group was trained to use Susu—a savings scheme for poor people in Ghana. Now each group has been trained to run village savings and loans associations. Some of the women have purchased land and some have even built homes to rent out. Our association has been so successful that more women are joining every month. This means they will be in jobs that they own, and from which they get full benefit.

Most of our customers are from Japan and Germany, and a few from North America. Keeping our customers has not been easy as we have to work very hard to improve the quality and packaging. We are also planting more shea trees, so that we can sustain our business. The greatest risks lie in the changing weather which stops our young trees from growing fast. The high cost of living puts pressure on people’s finances, reducing our sales. We are hopeful purchases of our products will soon pick up again.

Questions to the reader:

1. Can you tap into your community to help identify a good business idea, or ideas to expand and grow your business?

2. How could your employees or suppliers benefit from being organized and using the collective approach to get support, training and mentoring?

3. Do you acknowledge and reward the accomplishments of your employees, your business partners and people who support your business?

4. How do you help your employees to better recognize their talents and their limitations?

5. Have you identified innovative ways to support your employees to create value in their own lives and to their communities?