This report collects the main activities and impact of the Trade for Development Centre programme between 2018 and 2022.
Some remarkable results
- TDC supported 49 MSMEs and 8 Business Support Organisations with coaching in business management and/or marketing. Another 39 MSMEs also
received a week of training in ‘data capturing’. - The turnover of the African producer organisations that started and completed the coaching programme between 2019 and 2022 increased by 146%.
- In 2022, 48% of Belgians said they knew about Fair Trade Week.
- An average of 15,000 Belgians participated annually in the local activities that TDC funded. A further 117,500 Belgians were reached indirectly.
The added value of TDC’s coaching
TDC’s support proved its worth as a great many cooperatives achieved results in different areas, such as diversification of production or customers, adaptation to climate change, access to finance, etc. Several cooperatives even won some awards.
The added value of TDC’s coaching was also recognised by the European Union, which entrusted Enabel with the management of a project to enhance and professionalise cocoa cooperatives in Côte d’Ivoire, using TDC’s coaching
methodology.
Decent work at the top of the agenda
During the programme, TDC put decent work at the top of the agenda in several ways. TDC took the lead in a working group that delivered a letter signed by 60 Belgian companies to the Ministers of Development Cooperation and of Economy and Employment, asking the Belgian government for a legal framework around due diligence. This was also the theme of the fair trade breakfast organised at the Federal Parliament in May 2022.
Along with Fairtrade Belgium, Chocolaterie Galler and the Yeyasso cooperative, TDC conducted a pilot project to calculate the ‘living income gap’ for households in the cooperative. This exercise provided a wealth of information that allowed for the creation of an action plan to partially narrow the gap between a dignified income and current income. This calculation of the income gap, as well as diversification strategies and the introduction of traceability and segregation systems for products, will be included in the new coaching programme in the coming years.
