Economic Empowerment
A cooperative that cuts out the basket middlemen
Lydia Figuereido started a women-led cooperative for basket weavers in Malawi, where she says local traders buy baskets for 5 to 8 dollars and sell them for 35.
Waterproof vibrant dyes, design training and fair wages. That is what the cooperative provides, Lydia Figuereido says, along with market access for the women who weave.
Lydia, who studies at Chreso University Zambia, started the women-led cooperative for basket weavers to abolish the middlemen system among talented women in Malawi. Local traders there buy the women's baskets for 5 to 8 dollars, she says, and sell them for 35 dollars. "I started the cooperative to end this," she says.
“In Africa, when women can't earn, children can't go to school”
Lydia Figuereido
For the weavers, the change is, in her words, "no more accepting whatever a trader offers".
"we are ending this cycle," she says.