Project-conscious & Business-conscious

For the past two days I’ve been meeting with rice industry players around Kumasi, Ghana with Nash, a field business facilitator on the USAID ADVANCE agriculture market development project. Nash has been doing this work for decades in all parts of Ghana. So we had a lot to talk about, but one thing that …»

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The end-game of market facilitation?

In a taxi-ride conversation about how market facilitation happens and business relationships form in Canada, my fellow colleagues Mark, Mike, Colleen and I laugh when our answer is “deals on the golf course”. The logical extension is that we’re seriously investing our time in the wrong way—we should be building 9-hole golf courses!

But …»

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So let me get this straight: You work with rich mango farmers?

A great deal of aid in Africa is focused on food security. When the United Nations met at the Millennium Summit in 2000, they decided that goal number one should be to “Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger” and more specifically to “halve the proportion of people living on less than $1 a day”. Lately …»

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Small-scale Breakfast

About a year and a half ago, I took my first trip up to Tamale.  While there are many differences and similarities between the northern and the southern parts of Ghana, the prevalence of egg-and-bread stands in the North was apparent.

My friends introduced me to a particular spot, run by a lady named …»

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