Coming together to deliver safer and healthier work in rural Africa

Heat exposure and musculoskeletal disorders caused by work mean many women employed as shea butter farmers are unfit to work by the time they are in their 40s, while textile weaving has a similarly damaging effect.

Fishmonger women can include spike injuries among the predominant health and safety risks they experience while many quarry scavengers die at work because of the harsh conditions they face.

Now, IOSH is seeking to improve the working conditions faced by these women and to make their lives better. Fuelled by a vision of a safe and healthy world of work for all, IOSH is working with partners to deliver practical solutions which will prevent workplace harm in rural Africa.

Reducing harm

“In collaboration with our partners, we identified the need for help for these people, who all experience chronic workplace harm,” said Vanessa Harwood-Whitcher, Chief Executive of IOSH, which represents 50,000 health and safety professionals in around 130 countries.

IOSH has linked up with partners including the International Labour Organization, the International Social Security Association, Commonwealth Business Women Africa, Department of Occupational Safety and Health Services Kenya and Ghana’s Ministry of Labour Relations to achieve its goals.

Work began last year when IOSH’s members and health and safety professionals on the ground in Ghana and Kenya conducted risk assessments of the current conditions faced by the workers.

This has already led to progress towards helping some of the workers, including the formation of a co-operative, Lana Empire Africa, in Ghana, which has brought the women working with shea butter and the textile weavers into the formal economy. This means their work is regulated to the extent which they can sell their produce officially to international buyers at higher prices and in much greater volumes. In addition, a round of funding is in place to acquire land, property and machinery which will enable a scale of production while removing many of the causes of harm currently affecting the women.

Meanwhile, land has been secured at Kajiado near Nairobi, Kenya, to enable the quarry workers to grow crops and work safely on the production of their highly-prized beadwork in a workshop that will also act as a shop for tourists in the area. And in Kisumu, the fishmonger women are being trained to safely produce high-value fish leather and pig food from the bi-products of their current fish processing work and talks are underway with banks and Kenyan social development funds to provide financing for this.

Next phases

There are also a number of smaller tactical goals in the next phases of the project, including:

• building a short-term work shed and providing welfare facilities for textile weavers as well as improving the safety of the existing looms while construction of the main work area is under way;
• acquiring nut grinders for the shea butter workers to remove the need to grind by hand;
• providing protective equipment and fire guards to reduce the risk of injuries for the shea butter workers and fishmonger women while safer factory areas are built;
• and removing quarry workers, providing them with training in other industries such as making fishing flies, while the farmland and construction of the beadwork factory is taking place and the first year of crops are grown.

The next phases will also see education around hazards and how to prevent harm provided to all of the workers.

Vanessa added: “We are in the very early stages of this work – providing healthy, safe and sustainable working conditions for these people is not something that can happen overnight. But, by collaborating with our partners and through investment from others, we can really lead the way to a brighter future for them.”

IOSH has worked with a number of experts on the ground in the project, including philanthropists Helena Abotiwine in Ghana and Nana Wanjau in Kenya.

Helena Abotiwine said: “Due to the remoteness of the villages where these women work, they thought everyone had left them behind as no one was ready to travel four hours from the airport to reach them.

“Our work with IOSH has given them belief and hope. Moving them into the formal economy is a big step forward and we are now seeing significant demand for what they produce. But we need to do more. We need to provide shelter for these workers, provide equipment and skill them up.”