Three months in West Africa

I write this from Accra, Ghana, where I am two thirds of the way through an internship with Ethical

Apparel Africa.. At the end of this month I will also be travelling to northern Benin, to see some of

the sites and people that I have spent so much time learning about during my degree. Girton

college kindly contributed £400 to help me fund this experience, which has provided me with great

insight both into West Africa and experience of working for a social enterprise.

I arrived in Accra on 10th September. After a

weekend settling in and meeting my new

colleagues, I started work on Monday with

Ethical Apparel Africa (EAA). EAA is a social

enterprise, started by consultants and apparel

manufacturing experts who wanted to see a

change in how we produce fashion. EAA

strongly believe that mass production and

ethical production are not mutually exclusive, and that brands can and should be able to source their

products from factories that pay their workers living wages and maintain a healthy working

environment. EAA believes Africa is the new frontier for apparel manufacturing, given the large

labour force and high demand for jobs, and its favourable geographical location for shipping goods.

EAA is a social enterprise and consultancy company that acts as a partner on the ground for big

brands who want to invest in manufacturing in Africa but do not have the knowledge or time to

invest in bringing factories up to standard. By encouraging investment, EAA helps foster sustainable

business for factories, and therefore generates employment for hundreds of women in Ghana and

Benin. Moreover, EAA requires factories to reinvest profits into worker empowerment programs

such as literacy classes, healthcare and childcare provisions. I am working closely with the Impact

Team of EAA, helping to audit and monitor factories to improve safety standards and ensure fair pay

and working hours.

EAA works with several factories in

Accra (Ghana) and Cotonou (Benin). I

was fortunate to be able to go with

EAA to work in the factory in Cotonou,

which is just starting production for a

men’s shirt company based in the UK.

EAA had assisted the factory in

purchasing fire safety equipment and

personal protective equipment for

workers, such as dust masks. We also

saw the beginning of the construction

of a new fire escape. These changes

are all helping the factory to meet

compliance standards, which enables

them to secure regular, international orders.

We travelled to Cotonou by road, driving along the coast from Accra to the Togo border. After a little

visa trouble we crossed the border into Togo, stopping for lunch by the beach there. It took just over

an hour to cross the entire country, before we arrived at the Benin border. A slightly less stressful

crossing here, and then roads lined by palm trees as we drove along the coast to Cotonou - the

largest city in Benin.

Cotonou itself was very different to Accra, being less

‘developed’ and much smaller than Accra, and French

speaking. Streets swarm with motorbike taxis at rush hour,

crossing the Oueme river that runs through the city to the

Atlantic. Many people wear co-ordinating Dutch wax prints,

with families and couples often wearing matching outfits.

Beninise are very friendly people, and I enjoyed the

opportunity to finally practice my French with a very patient

and appreciative audience.

A few kilometres from Cotonou is the fishing town of

Ganvie, which is a stilted town built upon a lake, home to as

many as 35,000 people. We had a boat tour of the village,

which was unlike anything I had ever seen before. This

picture is of our guide, Bienvenue.

During other weekends I have also had the opportunity to explore Ghana. One of the most

interesting trips I did was to travel alone to Cape Coast in the West of Ghana. Along this coastline

there are over 40 forts, which were used most intensively for the transatlantic slave trade. The two

largest castles – Cape Coast Castle and Elmina Castle – are UNESCO World Heritage Sites. These

castles were built by the Dutch and Portugese, and were used as somewhere to store slaves until

they were ready to be transported across the Atlantic to the Americas. During our guided tour we

moved through the various cells and chambers where hundreds of slaves would be held, sometimes

for months on end. There are painful reminders of the extreme abuse that occurred at these sites. At

Elmina, you can still see the hidden

steps leading from the female

slaves’ cell to the governor’s

apartment, which women would

ascend, once they had been

selected by the governor to spend

the night in his room.

The castles were eerily beautiful

when I visited them, in the early

evening light. Yet the dark history of what these castles represent remained at the forefront of my

thoughts.

On other weekends I have visited Jamestown,

which is one of the oldest parts of Accra. It also

has a fort that was used during the slave trade.

Nowadays, Jamestown is famous for its music

and arts scene. It also has a proud history of

boxing, and has produced many of Ghana’s

champions. I also spent a weekend visiting the

Botanical gardens and going mountain biking in

Aburi, which is a town slightly north of Accra, in

beautiful hills. The photos show me at Cape

Coast castle, on top of Jamestown lighthouse,

and palm trees in Aburi Botanical Gardens.

As I am planning my final few weeks in West Africa, I am looking forward to spending my final two

weeks travelling. I aim to explore northern Benin in particular, which will definitely be a contrast to

life in Accra. After enjoying Cotonou so much, I feel I have to go back, and will look forward to the

adventure of travelling a less well trodden path, as I explore the remote northern parts of the

country…

By Lily Rice

7th November 2016