Kenya: Tackling the crisis of urban poverty

January 20, 2010 · 0 comments

NAIROBI, 19 January 2010 (IRIN) – Fridah Awour Agolla has sold vegetables in Nairobi’s Mathare slum for 20 years. In better times, her stock sold out every day. But lately market forces have begun to bite even harder for the millions in Kenya who live in such squalid, neglected settlements.

“My customers are buying less and less; now I find that goods like vegetables do not sell out, they go into the next day. People’s ability to buy these goods has really dropped,” Agolla, a mother of five, told IRIN.

Agolla managed to put her children through primary school but never earned enough to pay for secondary education.

“If I could afford to join a savings club [where members’ regular contributions are distributed on a rotational basis], I’d buy a variety of food to improve my stock and I would probably be selling more, and perhaps some of my children could go back to school,” she said. 

To fully understand Kenya’s slums you have to wander down twisted, slippery, narrow aisles, jump over open sewers, take in the smells of one-year old garbage, taste stewed chicken beaks or roasted fish gills, and share in the fear of being bulldozed in the middle of the night.

Pamela Anyango Odhiambo, 25, and a mother of five, says making ends meet gets harder and harder in Mathare.

“I think food prices have more than doubled within a short time; for example, with 300 shillings [US$4] I could feed my family for days. Now it is not even enough for one day,” said Odhiambo, nursing two-month-old twins.

“Humanitarian crisis” 

Slum-dwellers are among the Kenyans worst hit by high food prices, yet they receive far less humanitarian attention than other demographic groups. The poorest urbanites spend up to two-thirds of their income on staple foods alone.

“There is a humanitarian crisis in deprived informal settlements around the world, and one of the regions where this dynamic is playing out is in Kenya,” said Choice Okoro, advocacy and outreach officer for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs-Kenya.

“Urban poverty is set to be Kenya’s defining crisis over the next decade if it is not urgently addressed,” she added.

Okoro said lack of recognition of slums and settlements as residential areas for city planning and budgeting purposes has meant that residents have been denied essential services provided to other residents.

“These include water, sanitation, electricity, garbage collection, health, education, access roads and transport,” she said. “In turn, the services that property owners provide to tenants are often insufficient. 
“The number of urban population living in slums is expected to double in the next 15 years, as migration is exacerbated by environmental adversity,” she said.

In a September 2009 report, Oxfam-GB  noted that the proportion of urban Kenyans unable to meet their nutritional and other basic requirements (the “absolute poor”) had declined over the past decade. “But this conceals the fact that the percentage share of the very poorest urban groups – defined as the ‘food poor’ [those unable to meet all nutritional needs due to expenditure on other basic non-food essentials] and ‘hardcore poor’ [unable to meet their basic food needs even by forgoing other essentials] has actually been increasing.” The report uses government thresholds, which define “nutritional needs” as 2,250 kilocalories per adult per day.

According to the UN Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT), “Nairobi has some of the most dense, unsanitary and insecure slums in the world. Almost half of the population lives in over 100 slums and squatter settlements within the city, with little or inadequate access to safe water and sanitation.”

In an effort to address these problems, UN-HABITAT, the government and Nairobi City Council are working together on a Kenya Slum Upgrading Project (KENSUP), which focuses on improving infrastructure, initially in Kibera, one of Nairobi’s largest slums.

“Working together with the people of Kibera, we have identified the areas where the needs are greater, this is why we started working on water and sanitation,” said Joshua Kaiganaine, KENSUP’s programme manager, noting that $500,000 had so far been spent on water sanitation blocks, rubbish collection points and a 4km access road.

“We tackle waterborne diseases; later, we will move on to different areas like shelter and education but, for that we need to understand what people really can afford considering the majority of them have only casual jobs.”

In the first phase of a KENSUP slum decanting initiative, in September 2009 some 1,300 residents of Kibera were moved to new apartment blocks with monthly rents of $20.

Source – http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=87780

Liberia: Urban gardens to boost food security

January 20, 2010 · 0 comments

MONROVIA, 19 January 2010 (IRIN) – Farmers are turning to urban gardens as a way to boost food security in Liberia’s Montserrado County, where just one percent of residents grow their own produce today compared to 70 percent before the war.

Some 40 percent of Liberia’s population lives in the capital, Monrovia – located in Montserrado – after years of fighting sparked rural communities to move to the city. Many new arrivals had no access to land and have crowded into slums.

Over half of Monrovia’s residents live on less than US$1 a day, according to the World Bank.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is targeting 5,000 urban residents of Montserrado, Bomi, Grand Bassa, Bong and Margibi counties, to encourage them to start market gardens or increase the amount of fruit and vegetables they grow on their farms. Participants had to have access to tools and some land.

The aim is to improve food security and nutritional status while boosting incomes, said project coordinator Albert Kpassawah.

Participants told IRIN they plant hot peppers, cabbage, calla, tomatoes, onions, beans and ground nuts.

Health and nutrition experts in Liberia say increasing fruit, vegetables and protein in people’s diets is vital to reducing chronic malnutrition, which currently affects 45 percent of under-fives nationwide.

Joseph Rogers has a half-acre market garden in Johnsonville on the outskirts of Monrovia, which he plans to expand. “I am planting cabbage… I used to [grow vegetables] before the war, but [my crops] were damaged in the crisis. It affected my family.”

When he lost his garden his family found it hard to eat, he said. Now he grows enough to sell part of his produce.

“Sometimes people come here to purchase huge quantities. I pay for the school fees with the money I earn,” Rogers told IRIN.

Paul Tah, father of six, had never farmed before he got involved in the FAO project. “I got interested in this project because of the lack of jobs in this country,” he told IRIN. He now makes $200 each season from selling peppers.

“My family is in fine health. This is my livelihood now. I don’t have to depend on a government job to survive.”

Limitations

FAO assists primarily by providing seeds and training in techniques such as conserving rainwater and composting. The organization does not provide fertilizer, insecticides or tools – a concern to some participants. “You cannot grow cabbage without insecticide. It doesn’t work,” Anthony Nackers told IRIN.

Vermin, insects and poor storage destroy 60 percent of Liberia’s annual harvest, according to FAO.

And many of the most vulnerable city-dwellers – those with no access to land – cannot participate at all, FAO’s Kpassawah pointed out.

But he said he hopes the project’s benefits will spread beyond immediate participants, since all who take part are encouraged to pass on their training to relatives, neighbours and friends.

And there is ample scope to expand techniques learned from cities to rural areas, he pointed out. Just one-third of Liberia’s 660,000 fertile hectares are being cultivated, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

Source – http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=87798

Nigeria: Fighting Against Pollution in Lagos

January 20, 2010 · 0 comments

Lagos — More Nigerians currently depend on generators to power business and homes. Consequently, instances of fumes emitted and discharged right into the streets are common, a situation that is occasioned by the epileptic power supply in the country.

Experts consider the emissions highly dangerous given that they constitute danger to healthy living since they end up polluting the airways. They are also primary air pollutants because the fumes are emitted directly into the airways while the average residents and passersby inhale them daily.

The situation is actually compounded by the failure of the Power Holding Company of Nigerian (PHCN) to supply the needed power to run businesses in the country. Consequently, most businesses are powered by generators. And apart from the air pollution, noise pollution is said to have resulted in hearing losses for some 7.2 million Nigerians; representing 17.9 percent of the population aside the health implications.

It is also stated that prolonged exposure to intense noise leads to permanent hearing loss; induces stress; causes inefficiency at work; prevents sleep; causes irritability and generally degrades the quality of life.

According to Akeem Bello of the faculty of Law, University of Lagos, one of the principal sources of noise pollution in the state is neighbourhood noise which he defined as ‘great variety of sources of noise which may cause disturbance and noise to the general public not including road traffic and aircraft noise and industrial noise affecting workers and residents’.

He added that the impact of neighbourhood noise is more on densely populated cities like Lagos.

‘In a typical densely polluted urban area, the picture is one of a thick cloud of noise coming from a variety of sources. The sources include loud noise emanating from loudspeakers used by record stores; generating plants; pumping machines; grinding machines; television sets; musical sets; intruder alarms; night parties; churches and mosques,” he said.

The University lecturer noted that with the proliferation of religious places of worship, noise emanating from religious activities has been one of the primary sources of neighbourhood noise in the state.

He also identified others sources of air pollution in the state to road traffic and vehicular emissions

“It is estimated that Lagos has the highest national vehicular density of over 222 vehicles per kilometer against a country average of 11/kilometers while the growth of the use of motorcycles popularly known as okada has also greatly increased the problem of air pollution,” Bello noted.

However, as part of efforts at curbing neighbourhood noise pollution, the Lagos State Government through the Ministry of the Environment issued a ministerial directive to all religious houses to confine their loudspeakers inside their places of worship to the auditoriums.

And recently its efforts received a boost when West African Gas Pipeline Company (WAGPC) donated noise measuring meter and other equipment to it.

The equipment, which will help the Ministry to measure the level of noise generated from industrial and residential areas, will assist in reducing noise pollution to the barest minimum in order to safeguard the health of the citizenry.

WAGPC Corporate Affairs Manager, Mrs. Harriet Wereko-Brobby, who led the delegation, said the donation was a way of appreciating government’s effort at attaining sustainable environment devoid of pollution and degradation.

“The items will help the Ministry measure the level of noise at any time,” she said.

Stressing that noise level at any point in time, should not be more than 85 decibels, she noted that anything above that was capable of negatively affecting the health of the people.

She lauded the Ministry on its beautification, drainage, sanitation and landscaping projects, noting that, those projects would go a long way in combating the menace of climate change which she noted is at present the problem confronting the whole World.

Dr. Titilayo Anibaba, the Permanent Secretary in Ministry of the Environment who received the equipment thanked the company for its concerns for the environment and healthy living of the citizens.

She urged the management of the company to do more in the areas of capacity building and exchange programmes that would benefit both parties.

Anibaba explained that the issue of noise pollution has reached an alarming rate with a recently conducted study among public school pupils in the state indicating that more than 60 per cent of them have hearing impairment due to their daily exposure to a noisy environment.

She also disclosed that the Ministry has received several complaints from the public against noise pollution from the religious groups, merry makers, musical and video centres as well as household generators.

While appealing to members of the public to support government’s effort at reducing pollution to the barest minimum, Anibaba revealed that experts have found out that noise pollution is the major cause of sleeplessness leading to high blood pressure, hypertension and a times stroke.

She, however, assured that the state government would deploy the equipment for the purpose they were donated and also do everything possible to protect the lives and well-being of the citizens through the implementation of sustainable programmes that will promote healthy and sustainable environment.

Source – http://allafrica.com/stories/201001200634.html

ISUH Connections – January 2010 issue

January 15, 2010 · 0 comments

The January issue of ISUH Connections, the International Society of Urban Health newsletter is online at http://www.isuh.org/download/newsletter_january_2010.pdf. 

Contents

  • International Conference on Urban Health 2009
  • Tackling Urban Health Issues in India
  • Notes and Events
  • ICUH 2010

USAID WASH-UP Project in Ghana

January 15, 2010 · 0 comments

Jan 15, 2009 – Ghana – Water Agency Rescues Slum Dwellers

Water supply and sanitation services remain inadequate in slum settlements, according to the Corporative Housing Foundation (CHF) International, an aid agency. The agency has therefore initiated a three-year program called the Water Access, Sanitation and Hygiene for Urban Poor (WASH -UP) Project.  It began on October 1, 2009 and is expected to end on September 30, 2012. According to Francis Ampadu, Water and Sanitation Specialist of CHF International, the WASH-UP program will increase household access to improved and sustainable drinking water supply, as well as, sanitation facilities.

The program, supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), is being executed under the African Urban Poor-Improved Water Supply and Sanitation Project. It is targeted at 156,000 people within communities including Nima, Avenor and Ayidiki in Accra, and New Takoradi and Kojokrom in Sekondi Takoradi.

These came to light at a three-day workshop organized for the Avenor, Nima and Ayidiki in Accra from Monday to Wednesday. It was under the theme – Upgrading Lives of Slums Dwellers through Improvements in Water and Sanitation. 

It is estimated that about 5.5million people in Ghana, representing more than half of the urban population live in slum settlement. The informal nature of these settlements hamper water supply to a large extent. The areas also have been identified to have limited access to toilets.  As a result, households in these areas spend significant amounts of time and money to access unhygienic toilets facilities and obtain water at inflated prices.

WASH-UP is therefore aimed at assisting slum communities to improve on their current water and sanitation situation. It seeks to provide equitable access to improved water supply and basic sanitation for residents living in Nima, Avenor and Ayidiki New Takoradi and Kojokrom. WASH-UP is also geared at improving infrastructure and governance and changing behaviours.

Mr Ampadu indicated that the WASH-UP will promote innovative economic enterprises in the areas of water and sanitation; improve hygiene and sanitation behaviours among the urban poor; and strengthen local governance for water supply, sanitation and hygiene services. 

The District Cleansing Officer of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA), Charles Sintim, told Public Agenda that the AMA was working assiduolosly to get rid of the use of pan latrines in every community by the end of the first quarter of this year.

According to him, the Assembly was ready to prosecute all individuals and households using pan latrines at the end of the quarter. He commended CHF for the project and pledged that the AMA would support the chosen communities with requisite technical know-how and tools to work with to help free the environment from filth.

Source – Public Agenda (Accra)

Nairobi – High cost of antibiotics slows down war on disease

January 13, 2010 · 0 comments

An essential antibiotic used to treat a range of infectious diseases, including diarrhoea and typhoid, has been found to be most expensive in Kenya compared to other markets, putting it above the reach of many patients who earn about a third of the price of the recommended dose per day.

The survey of 93 countries found that ‘ciprofloxacin’ costs between Sh225 per dose of 14 days for the generic version and Sh4,950 for the patented drug from Bayer Pharmaceuticals.

Universal health access proponents are now calling on the government to ensure fair pricing of medicines like ciprofloxacin that treat a range of common ailments by among other things having the recommended price printed on the packaging.

Health system

“Most countries have a policy on promoting the purchase and prescription of generic medicines in the public health system [and] there is no reason why a similar policy should not be applied in Kenya,” said Gichinga Ndirangu, the regional coordinator of Health Action International-Africa, the non profit group that conducted the survey.

Although the recommended price of the drug in Kenya is Sh3,375, it sells for as much as Sh4,950 in some chemists. That is about four times the Sh1,275 per dose obtaining in South East Asia, two times the Sh2,700 in Eastern Mediterranean and; one and half times the Sh3,300 in Europe.

Ciprofloxacin treats diseases like urinary tract infections, lower respiratory tract infections, skin structure infections, bone and joint infections, infectious diarrhoea, typhoid fever, sexually transmitted diseases and opportunistic infections in people living with HIV.

Health Action International conducted a survey in 93 countries worldwide and carried a spot check last November in Nairobi to ascertain the full price which a patient would pay for ciprofloxacin.

HAI recommends that essential medicines must be provided for free in public health facilities and systems to ensure transparency in pricing of medicines be put in place.

While Kenya National Drug Policy already encourages prescription of generic drugs by requiring that all prescriptions must be in their generic names, the public has not been adequately sensitised on this leaving pharmacists to profit from the ignorance.

“The governmment should control the price of medicines. The law should require the price of medicines to be printed on the package,” said Kamamia Murichu, the chairman of Kenya Pharmaceuticals Distributors Association.

Emma Wanyonyi of the Consumer Information Network said the survey reveals the why the poor Kenyans earning less than Sh74 a day cannot afford to access ciprofloxacin. On Monday, pharmaceutical manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline slashed prices of antibiotics Zinnat and Augumentin by 30 per cent and 40 per cent respectively in a bid to move volumes in a market where the low pricing of generics is threatening the appeal of patented drugs.

Perennial stockouts

Although antibiotics are offered at government hospitals at subsidized prices, perennial stockouts have meant patients buying the drug in private outlets.

“Stock-outs in government hospitals forces people to turn to private pharmacies where prices are significantly higher. Many will end up going without treatment or taking a lower dose to contain rather than cure the illness,” said Mr Ndirangu.

The cost of medicines in Kenya directly affects the purchasing power of households because most people pay for medical services out of pocket. It means the cost of medicines compete with the household income used to buy food, education and transport.

The most recent data from the Ministry of Health indicates that out-of-pocket expenditure accounts for 53 per cent of the total cost of medical services in Kenya with the remainder being Government, community insurance including harambees, private prepaid health plans and non-profit institutions.

Purchase of antibiotics constitutes over 70 per cent of the average Sh1,500 pocket medical spend by Kenyans in a year driven by community-based respiratory tract infections that have a high occurrence in Kenya.

The cost of medicine is a life or death issue in Kenya where poverty afflicts 60 per cent of the population.

Research by a group of professionals responsible for advising the government on universal health care showed the abject poor make the highest number of hospital visits, a total of 16 every year, but they use the lowest amount of money, Sh1,637 every year to pay for their health care services.

The rich make the lowest number of hospital visits averaging 9.6 and use Sh2,704 on average per visit.

Source – Business Daily

Urbanization of Africa analyzed

January 12, 2010 · 0 comments

 In 1950, only 14.5% of the population in sub-Saharan Africa lived in the city. In 1980, this percentage increased to 28% and in 1990 to 34%.  It is expected that by 2020, 50% of the population in sub-Saharan Africa will be urbanized and in 2025, this figure will be at 60%. In 1960, Johannesburg was the only city in sub-Saharan Africa with a population of over one million inhabitants.

In 1970, there were 4 cities with over one million inhabitants: Cape Town, Johannesburg (both in South Africa), Kinshasa (in the then Zaire, now Democratic Republic of the Congo), and Lagos (Nigeria). In the late 80s, Abidjan (Ivory Coast, Accra (Ghana), Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Dakar (Senegal), Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), Durban (South Africa), East Rand (South Africa, is now part of the vast metropolitan area of Johannesburg), Harare (Zimbabwe), Ibadan (Nigeria), Khartoum (Sudan), Luanda (Angola) and Nairobi (Kenya) joined the list.

In 2010 it is estimated that at least 33 African cities have a population of over 1 million inhabitants. In 2015, it is estimated that Lagos will have 23 million people, becoming the third megaloplis of the world after Tokyo and Bombay. The capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kinshasa, which in 1940 had a population of 50,000 inhabitants, has now become the 23rd most populous city in the world, with 10 million inhabitants.

Even smaller cities are rapidly expanding. In Kenya, for example, in 1962 there were 34 cities. In 1999, there were 177. In Malawi, the percentage of urban population has grown from 5% in 1960 to 13% in 1995. 75% of the urban population resides in the major cities of Blantyre, Lilongwe, Mzuzu, and Zomba. The growth rate of urban population is 5.6% per year.

Source – http://www.energypublisher.com/article.asp?id=25023

Uganda – Flying toilets are a major problem in Kampala

January 12, 2010 · 1 comment

KAMPALA, 8 January 2010 (IRIN) – The lack of adequate sanitation facilities in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, has led to increased use of polythene bags – known as “flying toilets” – for human waste disposal, local officials said.

The situation is worse in slums where infrastructure is basic. The few private and public facilities that exist charge up to USh200 [US10 cents] per use of a toilet.

“These areas are characterized by poor drainage systems and in the rainy season, the problem becomes worse,” said Bernard Luyiga, a councillor in Kampala district. “We have not invested enough in this area.

“Water and sanitation in Kivulu [slum in Makerere area, which he represents on the city council] are among the worst I have come across in my life. We tried to use Eco-san toilets… but the ‘flying toilet’ has remained rampant.”

Eco-san toilets use a natural biological process to break down human waste into a dehydrated, odourless, compost-like material, and save on water use. They were developed in South Africa in the 1990s.

It is difficult to tell how many facilities exist in Kivulu, but several pits latrines were visible, with dilapidated rusty iron sheets for walls, cracked floors and plastic roofs.

Contaminated springs

The situation is similar in other slums. About 6.2 percent of households in the city have no toilet facilities at all. Most, according to chief health inspector Mohammed Kirumira, are in the slums.

According to the city council: “One study conducted by Chemiphar estimated that up to 90 percent of the natural springs in Kampala are contaminated, especially in the wet season, yet this remains a major source of water for the urban slum dwellers.”

Agatha Nambi, whose house stands near a drainage stream formed by an overflowing pit latrine in Kivulu, said: “It is very difficult to keep clean here. You observe cleanliness in your home, but other people just bring their mess to you and you have to give up… that is why our children keep getting sick.”

Justus Namenya, a casual labourer living nearby, added: “This is the rainy season, so this place is unbearable. [It] becomes filthy and sometimes water flows up to your house with all the dirt in it.”

Inadequate water

Only about 65 percent of Kampala’s two million residents have access to clean water. The rest use water that is sometimes contaminated by pit latrines.

According to Uganda’s Lands, Housing and Urban Development Ministry, the high cost of piped water has forced some city dwellers to rely on springs and wells.
“Over 50 percent of household occupants in Kampala are hospitalised every three months due to malaria while contamination of water by prevalence of micro-organisms is evident in the water sources of the city,” it said in a paper.

A recent survey by the Catholic Church’s Justice and Peace Centre found that average toilet to household ratio in Kampala slums was about 1:25.

“The children are told to use the school toilets so that when they come back home, they do not ask for money to go to the toilet,” the survey report, The plight of the urban poor and yet increased rural-urban migration, noted.

“Poor sanitation accounts for cholera outbreaks that are usually experienced in the slums of Kampala.”
 
Urban poverty

According to UN-HABITAT, 44 percent of Kampala’s population live in unplanned, underserviced slums. Informal settlements cover up to 25 percent of the city’s total area.

In informal settlements, only 17 percent of the population can access piped water. According to UN-HABITAT: “There is a high prevalence of sanitation-related diseases such as diarrhoea, worm infestations. Malaria is also endemic.”

Some 92.7 percent of Kampala’s population, the African Development Bank found, used on-site sanitation systems including septic tanks and pit latrines. However, emptier services, which are offered mainly by private sector on a cash-on-demand basis, were inadequate.

“As a result, effluent from latrines and septic tanks is often discharged into the environment untreated,” it added.

Government response

Uganda’s State Minister for Lands, Housing and Urban Development, Michael Kafabusa Werikhe, said the government was determined to address the appalling sanitation in the city.

Kampala authorities are trying to roll out a new sewage system by 2014, financed by the European Union, German government, African Development Bank and Ugandan government.

“Uganda is targeting to uplift the lives of at least one million people by the year 2020 through implementing the slum upgrading strategy and action plan,” Werikhe told IRIN on 7 January.

“We believe that slums are a development challenge which must be addressed to create harmony in our societies,” he added.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=87677

India – Census estimates of slum populations

January 12, 2010 · 0 comments

2001 Census conducted enumeration of slum population for the first time in the country. The Census of India, 2001 conducted the enumeration of slum population of 640 cities/towns with a population of 50,000 or more spread across 26 States/ Union Territories. This enumeration reported slum population of 42.6 million constituting 23.1 percent of the population of 640 cities/towns.

The people living in slums are subject to inadequate access to basic amenities like drinking water, sanitation and health facilities. The Government has launched Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) since December 3, 2005 to address the issues of provision of housing and basic civic amenities like clean drinking water, sanitation and health facilities to urban poor/slum dwellers, in addition to city-wide infrastructure facilities. The Basic Services to the Urban Poor (BSUP) programme under JNNURM addresses housing and civic amenities in 65 Mission cities. Similar problems of Non-Mission cities are addressed through the scheme of Integrated Housing and Slum Development Programme (IHSDP). The Mission period is 2005-2012.

Jan 11, 2010 – http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=56785

Ethiopia firm recycling tires into shoes

January 12, 2010 · 0 comments

Ethiopia firm recycling tyres into shoes does big business via internet

SoleRebels offers inspiration

Old truck tyres never die, they just turn into sandals. For decades that has been the tradition in Ethiopia, where everyone from farmers to guerrilla fighters has fashioned worn-out road rubber into cheap, long-lasting footwear.

But now, thanks to a young woman entrepreneur who has combined the internet’s selling power with nimble business practices more often associated with Asian countries, the idea has been turned into an unlikely international hit. By adding funky cotton and leather uppers to recycled tyre soles, Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu has sold many thousands of pairs of handmade flip-flops, boat shoes, loafers and Converse-style trainers to foreign customers.

In the run-up to Christmas, workers at the soleRebels “factory” – a small house on the outskirts of the Ethiopian capital – were frantically cutting, sewing and gluing to fulfil internet purchases from customers as far away as Canada and Australia. Alemu’s brother packed pairs of cotton and suede trainers into a box about to be couriered to Amazon.com, the company’s main customer, which receives the shoes in the US three to five days after placing its bulk order. “We are sitting in Addis Ababa but acting like an American company,” said Alemu, an excitable 30-year-old former accountant who is fond of reeling off the numbers that illustrate her firm’s rapid growth.

Just five years after start-up, soleRebels employs 45 full-time staff who can produce up to 500 pairs of shoes a day. More will be hired after next month once the footwear range, priced between £21 and £40, goes on sale online in the UK and Japan on Amazon’s new footwear website javari.co.uk. The company’s sales target for 2010 is an impressive £300,000, but Alemu’s ultimate goal – one she seems deadly serious about – is far loftier: to become “the Timberland or Skechers of Africa”.

The success of soleRebels, which has thrived in the global market with no outside support other than a government line of credit to help meet large orders, is challenging preconceptions both about Ethiopia and the best way to lift its people out of poverty.

Read more – The Guardian

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