By Awale Degeweine Sherdon |BORESHA Project
Somali Regional State in Ethiopia suffers from natural calamities such as drought, flood and disease and conflict over natural resources. Local populations move across borders to access markets but also to reach livestock pastures and social services and markets, schools, and health services.
This is the story of Jamado Abdi Sid born and brought up in Dollo Ado in the Somali Region of Ethiopia. Jamado, aged 40, has 11 children alive out of the 14 she gave birth to. One of her children is now a school graduate but others are still at school. The family relies on farming using irrigation water from River Dawa. Nine years ago, her family was farming 70 hectares of land and used to supply fresh produce to the town, but then Prosopis started to invade the farm and the land productivity declined. Recalling those days, Jamado says “as the Prosopis plant went deep in to our farm, what we could produce decreased dramatically. The plant has also invaded the neighbouring farms and our area became very food insecure. In the end, we had to abandon our farm and move to Dollo Ado. By the time we left, Prosopis covered more than 65 hectares of our land, leaving hardly any area where we could grow enough food for the family. We even had to send some of our children to relatives so that they could eat and survive. We had no income so we could not pay school fees for the 7 children who needed to be in school. Even the neighbors were suffering, so there was no support within or even from outside the community”.
The invasive species is now covering over 100 hectares where Jamado and her family lived but there has been no intervention to curb its spread. Other farmers are also being forced to migrate due to increasing poverty in that area. Jamado meanwhile came up with a great business idea which she is implementing successfully. She took the first steps in the setting up of a Prosopis charcoal making cooperative. She established the first cooperative in Dollo Ado back in 2011, using the Prosopis pods from the abandoned family farm as her first start up. From the onset she knew there was demand for charcoal in the market and supply was limited, it is then that her entrepreneurial mind set kicked in taking full advantage of the opportunity that presented itself.
She first began by cutting the plant and selling it as firewood then later as charcoal for the local market. She observes “at the beginning, the marketplace was not very profitable, and the product sales were limited as most of the people did not use Prosopis firewood or charcoal at home and it was very challenging to convince them to give it a try. Also, the local government believed that the cooperative was using other sources of wood and destroying the natural forest but that was not true, however I stuck to my business and let the government know about the source of the wood and charcoal that I was selling.”
She later heard about a few local NGOs in the area that were promoting the utilization of Prosopis charcoal, she submitted a proposal to one of the agencies and successfully received a small fund to establish the business formally and to transport the charcoal to refugee camps and neighboring villages. This is a lady with great business acumen, she is truly an inspiration and a role model in her community, she saw an opportunity and decided to take full advantage of it, what is profound is the fact that she stood to her guns and never let anyone or anything discourage her from the path she decided to take.
She applied for and has won a BORESHA grant and aims to expand her cooperative business to the neighboring countries. She said, “I have experience and learnt much about the Prosopis business and I want to expand it to the level that it benefits not only communities but also livestock in the form of animal feeds”. Through her creativity and hard work, Jamado has set an example on how to convert misfortune into success. She will be supported in further learning through business skills training at the BORESHA Business Development Support Center (BDSC) in Dolo Ado which will continue providing services in the coming years to business-minded community members like her.