I had the privilege of attending multiple AfCFTA events, including the launch event in Dar Es Salam in 2022, and the business forum in Cape Town in May 2023. Two things stayed with me.
First, on a personal level: In my career so far, I had mostly attended Western business conferences. Being in rooms full of fellow African brothers and sisters from across the continent felt long overdue, very refreshing, and a win in itself. Connecting with African entrepreneurs, youth, and elders alike, learning about each other's communities, challenges, and local solutions filled me with genuine pride and much-needed hope for my continent. A special mention goes to traditional African clothes as business attire: how colorful, how beautiful!
The second thing that struck me is how clear our collective voice, as Africans, is today. In the keynotes and panels, as well as in one-on-one discussions, there was a consensus about our shared main challenge across the continent: Africa has generated significant added value for centuries, fueling economies worldwide. However, African trade still accounts for just about 3% of global trade, according to the World Bank. This shows that African economies have not benefited, and African communities have not reaped the benefits of this added value. Consequently, these communities struggle to build fairer, more effective economies. Our economies are held back by systemic challenges (such as persistent unemployment, corruption, brain drain, and the climate crisis) and by limited resources鈥擜frica receives less than 1% of total venture capital compared to about 30% for Asia (AVCA, 2021) and about 5% of total foreign direct investment inflows, compared to about 42% for the Asian continent (UNCTAD).
It is clear that change is urgently needed. African communities must upgrade their trade infrastructure and do things differently: we need to gradually divest from systems that extract value from Africa and invest in systems that cultivate Africa and propel it towards a future where it is truly sovereign. Previous attempts to implement solutions in African communities often failed because they resulted from Western intervention, not grassroots initiatives led by Africans. These imported approaches perpetuated extractive power dynamics and were ill-suited to African needs. It is time for grassroots solutions led by Africans themselves.
We are today at the very beginning of this reform project, and meaningful initiatives like the AfCFTA are on track to provide support. However, the amount of work needed to make this vision a reality can quickly become overwhelming and dissuade us from even trying. This is why so many young Africans choose to build their futures elsewhere. As a young African today, a returning expatriate, and someone who spent the past four years thinking about, discussing, and working alongside my community to address systemic issues in Morocco, I would like to offer some perspectives.
While the numbers I mentioned are not encouraging, there is a particular number that simplifies the issue in my eyes: about 7 out of 10 jobs in emerging markets are created by small and medium businesses (ILO). This means most jobs and the change we seek can be created by local African entrepreneurs, provided that we design a system that supports them in accessing the market. While the problems are big, the solutions start locally and can be true to our communities and cultures: if the American dream is a big multinational factory business, the African dream is a well-run local cooperative.
Speaking of cooperatives, I would like to zoom in and introduce a concrete example of a local initiative I am part of that embodies this vision: The Anou Cooperative.
When you buy a product on the Moroccan craft market, whether online or in local medinas, artisans (mostly rural women who did not go to school) earn on average 4% of what you pay (less than $1 a day when the minimum wage is $10 a day). The remaining 96% goes to middlemen, many of whom are foreign-owned businesses. These businesses amass significant wealth and experience exponential growth by selling these products, while Moroccan artisans are marginalized and struggling to earn even the minimum wage. Official data demonstrates that this exploitation has slowly eroded the craft industry, which represents the second-largest source of employment in rural areas and a significant competitive advantage for Morocco in the international market. Artisans are abandoning their crafts, organic materials are being replaced with environmentally harmful alternatives, and ancestral technology and cultural heritage are being lost鈥攁ll while demand for said craft is at an all-time high and the market is worth billions of dollars.
The non-African solution to this problem is the concept of 鈥渇air trade,鈥� which has been implemented over the past 50 years through Western intervention by fair trade organizations and foreign businesses. In this model, about 20% of the paid price is allocated to artisans, while 80% is consumed by (mostly foreign) overhead costs. As such, most of the added value of craft does not stay within the artisan community.
The African solution, embodied by The Anou Cooperative, is different. Ten years ago, rural artisan community organizers from different regions of Morocco, each equipped with experience gained locally, united to establish a national cooperative and the country's first artisan-owned and artisan-managed e-commerce platform. Beyond fair trade, The Anou Cooperative has developed simplified technology owned by the artisans themselves and a peer-to-peer artisan-led training system. Combined, these allow artisans to manage their market access, sell directly to their clients online, and keep 100% of the price. This transformative shift in capacity and revenue generation helped artisans regain control over their market and paved the way for a craft economy that centers on artisans and sustainability.
Anou artisans are today able to make the minimum wage and beyond. They are regaining agency over their craft: focusing on product quality to develop the competitiveness of Moroccan craft, developing partnerships with wholesale companies to scale their work and bring economic opportunities back into the country, and diversifying revenue streams by going into retail and services (offering village visits, residencies, workshops) among other things. They are even integrating their supply chain and developing one of the most ambitious supply chains for craft in Africa through the Atlas Wool Supply Co., Africa's first carbon-negative wool mill. Beyond providing an alternative to imported wool from New Zealand, this wool mill champions climate crisis mitigation solutions by incorporating a solar farm that allows low-energy costs, which are used as incentives for farmers to adopt greener practices. The mill ultimately aims to promote, in the context of severe droughts, a future where Ait Bougmez, the valley where the mill is located, will have more water in 20 years than it does today.
The key factor contributing to the success of The Anou Cooperative is that it is carried by the communities it serves: by Moroccan artisans, for Moroccan artisans. Thus, it can conceptualize solutions beyond Western imagination: why hire a foreigner to do the market-access work on behalf of artisans and keep most of the added value, when we can redesign the system to enable the artisans themselves to do the work and keep 100% of the sale price of their product?
The journey of realizing the vision of The Anou Cooperative has been, and continues to be, arduous. Things that should take a year, in our context, take ten years. This is because our existing systems are not built to support systemic change or MSMEs. The foundations that fund work on social issues are highly risk-averse and are thus more comfortable funding business-as-usual and predictable charity models (despite a track record showing that those models do not work) over funding innovative grassroots models that provide the desired impact and valuable agency for the communities. Extractive foreign businesses are still the norm and receive more support than artisan businesses. Despite a decade of artisans selling directly online, government agencies still claim that artisans cannot do so and would rather support middlemen businesses that exploit these communities.
Yet Anou artisans are not backing down (what choice do they have?), because they understand that change takes time and that fortune favors the bold. They have had to get creative, and through private investment, they are acquiring meaningful assets to build a robust artisan infrastructure. The latest component of which is a million-dollar investment in a flagship Anou retail store in the heart of Marrakech, the tourism capital, to capture more demand and opportunities and scale their work further. Through their resilience and innovative problem-solving, Anou artisans continue to ensure market access for over 600 artisans across Morocco today and plan to grow that number meaningfully over the next few years.
During my stay in Cape Town for the AfCFTA business forum, I wanted to purchase a craft item to take home. I scanned the market for a while and started identifying a pattern similar to the situation in Morocco. I came across mostly low-quality cheap souvenirs sold through middlemen, and when I finally found intricate handmade textiles, the shop owner told me that it鈥檚 his private collection that is not for sale because such textiles are now extinct.
I mention this to highlight the urgency of this work. So many of Africa鈥檚 resources have been extracted, and many more resources and competitive advantages are now being lost due to globalization, lack of market access, or the climate crisis. The more voices join us in advocating for and building African-led local solutions today, the quicker we can scale these solutions in time to preserve African craft and economies, and ultimately, the sovereignty of African communities.
