Since Liliane Ploumen became Dutch minister of both aid and trade, the term ‘inclusive trade’ has been all the rage. A lot of funding currently goes to development projects which set up formal trade organizations such as cooperatives, sometimes together with import companies.
In practice, however, inclusive trade is by no means always successful trade, claims PhD holder candidate Ellen Mangnus. Mangnus works at the Royal Institute for the Tropics (KIT) and got her PhD in the Knowledge, Technology and Innovation chair group in Wageningen. For nine months she observed more than 100 farmers and traders in wheat and sesame seed in southern Mali. She studied two cooperatives, both of which turned out to exist only on paper to a great extent. The sesame cooperative was set up by farmers in order to qualify for aid from the international organization IFDC.
‘But that doesn’t mean there is no cooperation,’ says Mangnus. It just takes much more fl exible and less formalized forms than many donors or governments have in mind. Farmers, for instance, turn out to be traders too, while some traders sometimes spend periods working on a plantation in Ivory Coast. Traders are also very selective in choosing their business partners, testing their skills out first. They start by giving them a small sum, perhaps 50 euros. If the partner comes back the next week with a profi t, they get a slightly larger sum to go away with.
Mangnus: ‘Some grow bigger, while others carry on trading with 50 euros a week all their lives.’ Mangnus still believes that helping poor farmers with their trading can contribute to combatting poverty. ‘There is a lot right with Dutch development aid. But not everybody is an entrepreneur, as policymakers sometimes assume. Our interventions could be even better if we based them on taking a better look at the way existing trade is organized.’ Development organizations should focus less on establishing statutes and rules for organizations such as new cooperatives. What they should focus on is helping people acquire the skills that a good trader needs. .