Challenges
Employment, income generation and social inclusion, especially of youth and women, are important challenges for the socioeconomic development of São Tomé and Príncipe. Like other small island developing states, São Tomé and Príncipe has a fragile, limited and poorly diversified economy. Currently, the net official development assistance received accounts for 12 percent of the gross national income (GNI). The total unemployment rate is 14 percent, with women having higher unemployment rates than men: the female unemployment rate is 20.5 percent of the female labour force versus the male unemployment rate of 8.8 percent of the male labour force. Handicraft production in São Tomé and Príncipe, in addition to its lack of professionalization and low added value, suffers from the absence of a particular differentiation from what is traditionally manufactured on the African continent and is poorly linked to external consumer markets.
Toward a Solution
This project was a collaboration between the governments of Brazil and São Tomé and Príncipe and the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries (CPLP). It was implemented by Instituto Mazal (Brazil) and São Tomé and Príncipe’s Ministry of Youth and Sports (Youth Institute) and supported by the Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC). The main objective of this triangular-cooperation project was technical training to design and develop handicraft products that represent the country’s cultural identity. Targeting artisans and apprentices (mostly young people and women), the project sought to provide them with new sources of income by invigorating handicraft production for domestic consumption and export.
With the involvement of designers and artisans from Brazil and São Tomé and Príncipe, the project comprised three phases, described below.
- A one-year capacity-building programme for artisans and apprentices in the production of handicraft items with the use of various techniques and materials: embroidery, vegetable dyeing, paper, carpentry, sculpture, sewing. The programme focused on the technical quality and originality of the items produced, highlighting the use of local raw materials and motifs in their design and included the organization of groups of artisans, taking into account their vocations.
- Complementary training in social entrepreneurship, management, marketing, communication and environmental preservation. This phase included acquisition of machinery and equipment for the capacity-building workshops (as well as the training of technicians to maintain and repair them) and the training of local instructors in the various techniques employed, who later took on the role of multipliers.
- Elaboration of dissemination materials and development of promotion activities, mainly aimed at the foreign market.
The main results of the initiative include:
- training of about 150 artisans and apprentices from around the country in the production of competitive and culturally rooted handicrafts;
- establishment of a shared management structure involving the workshop leaders, the local coordinators, the general design coordination and the style coordination;
- elaboration of a manual of procedures related to the project’s components, supporting the quality of the production and consolidation of the initiative;
- establishment of the Uê Tela cooperative by the trained artisans to give continuity to the project and ensure its sustainability (hosted by the Youth Institute in the capital São Tomé);
- launch of two handicraft collections (including decorative objects, furniture, paper items made from banana trunks, cotton fabrics dyed using wood bark, clothing and fashion accessories): Fédu cu Món (“handmade”) and Modo Fenón (“our way of doing/being”), promoted through bilingual catalogues (in Portuguese and English); and
- establishment of product distribution and commercialization channels: a social store in Sao Tome and Principe and international deliveries (part of the products are sold in Brazil).
The craft activity fostered by the project has already become the main means of living of most of the cooperative’s artisans (especially women). When it was approved by the CPLP in 2011, the initiative was intended as a pilot project that, depending on its outcomes, could be expanded to other Lusophone countries. Thus, Angola and Cabo Verde have already expressed interest in replicating Sao Tome and Principe’s experience in the field of handicraft production.
