4. Week 2 - Do the Rice Thing / Part 1

after a couple of days in ghana, we were introduced to our project and work for the next couple of months. our 'clients' are two 60 year old women (aunty becky and aunty aggie) in a small town north east of the capital accra. they are pretty incredible women who over the past 30 years have built up businesses from nothing to something relatively substantial today.


they are known as aggregators and they fund  farmers to produce rice which they receive  unprocessed, they process it and then sell it to retailers. they are something of a middle-man, however they are effectively the backbone of the industry as they provide the credit / funding to the farmers in order to grow rice. the banks will not go anywhere near the farmers, so without their funding there would be no rice industry. they keep few records, manage large numbers of workers and networks of farmers and retailers. they basically run the business in their heads. they are pretty sharp but need to industrialize as their business and the industry expands and they require more and more financing from the banks. no computers, internet or powerpoint, just a notepad and a pen. its back to basics and very real... enter two white people who have spent the past ten years in offices.


nicola and i spend a couple of days/ nights a week up near the village with the ladies and their businesses to get to understand them.  we have few friends in the area - a taxi driver (eugine) who picks us up from our hotel every morning and delivers us to the towns closer to the farms. I am pretty sure we are paying him a weekly wage for our daily ride, but i guess that's the foreigners 'tax'. I leave nicola at auntie aggie's and carry on to becky's farm. I then jump on a motor bike on a dirt road for about 20 mins to get to my farm...the driver somehow manages to avoid the pot holes and get me the safely.


the project's mission is to increase food security in africa. we have been seeking out local rice where ever we go...maybe our biggest achievement will be eating local rice breakfast, lunch and dinner!

my rice family (becky and evelyn)

nicola's rice aunty (aggie)