TrustAfrica, together with their consortium partner Solidaridad West Africa will launch the RECLAIM Sustainability! programme in West Africa on the 30th of July 2021. The West Africa project launch will be held in Accra, Ghana from 12:00 pm to 3:00 pm GMT.   

With this programme, we strive to foster genuine and inclusive sustainability in global value chains, where the voices of farmers, miners, workers, and citizens are represented in decision making, and civil society is strengthened. We advocate for sustainable use of natural resources, decent work, fair value distribution, gender and social inclusion, and sustainable consumption.   

We are very grateful to the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the trust and support in implementing this programme and look forward to working together towards our joint goal: reclaiming sustainability!  

Dr Ebrima Sall, Executive Director of TrustAfrica will join Solidaridad West Africa managing Director Isaac Gyamfi and other local partners to launch the project. Dr. Sall notes that, “The most exciting thing about this program for us at TrustAfrica is its great transformative potential. In the next five years, we should see greater equity in the value chains that the program is working on to attain more decent working conditions and living wages for all, fair value, economic justice, and sustainability. It is also about farmers and workers, women and men having a say and choice in how our economies work, and in redressing north-south imbalances and inequalities as structural transformation and value addition increases in the South”. 

The RECLAIM Sustainability! Program Lead for TrustAfrica, Dr Bethule Nyamambi confirms that “in line with our TrustAfrica strategy, we want to contribute to and see a significant shift in how African smallholder farmers, especially women engage and are included in value chains and trade. An important aspect of that is in ensuring greater accountability from national governments and other decision makers for investments and support to improving equity in the value chains.”    

The RECLAIM Sustainability! program is a collaborative initiative with Business Watch Indonesia, Fair Food, Solidaridad Network.  In next month’s newsletter we will share how this collaboration aims to accelerate disruptive innovations in the supply chain, advocate for inclusive dialogue to address issues in value chains and trade; and amplify the voice of citizens to influence norms and policy around sustainable resource management, decent work, fair value distribution and sustainable consumption. Watch the space for a feature on this important initiative in next month’s edition.