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Momodou
Denmark
11833 Posts |
 Posted - 30 Jun 2007 : 22:37:19
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Foroyaa Editorial
DOES THE PRESIDENT KNOW WHERE SOME OF THE BULLS ARE COMING FROM?
Women who are engaged in the operation of small scale enterprises are growing. However, they are finding it very difficult to guarantee regular supply of commodities. Let us take the meat industry as an example. As the President made claims that most people engaged in the selling of meat are foreigners, some Gambians especially women have decided to become involved in the business.
Foroyaa is making special effort to study what we can call a “Bana bana trade.”
The “Bana bana” is a middle person who stands between the producer and consumer. Many Gambian women have been building their entrepreneurial capacities to move across borders as “Bana bana” traders. They have been involved in bringing vegetables and spices from Senegal, banana, palm oil, yams, coconut from Guinea, Guinea Bissau and Cote d’Ivoire, respectively.
Recently, the women have decided to take the real bull by the horn. Many are shifting to the meat industry.
What a number of them are complaining is the sporadic nature of the sale of bulls in the Gambian markets by Gambian herdsmen. It becomes all the more difficult to find bulls when festivals are taking place which often require countless numbers of bulls to be slaughtered to feed the participants.
It is now becoming clear to such women that the butchers used to depend on “Bana bana” traders who go all the way to Mali to bring bulls for consumption in The Gambia.
The Gambian women have also taken the trail. They are now going up to Mali to purchase bulls.
The claim that the Gambia is the supermarket of the sub region is becoming less credible as the Gambian “Bana bana” traders go to the sub region to purchase firewood, palm oil, bananas, yams, coconuts, vegetables and so on and so forth.
The government needs to study the nature of the informal sector to know the trend of production and the origin of commodities consumed in The Gambia.
This will determine the level of dependency of the Gambia on sub regional markets for the consumption needs of the people and for re-export. This should inform planning and policy making on the economy.
Festivals do bring people together to drink and dine but the real achievement is how to bring the people together to produce, trade and consume the products of their sweat so as to promote the general welfare.
Hungry people cannot enjoy watching the few who have the opportunity to eat, drink and be merry just for a period and then move into the vicious cycle of poverty again.
Source: Foroyaa Newspaper Burning Issue
Issue No. 75/2007, 29 June – 1 July 2007
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