Crafting The Future
Yorkshire Post Magazine [02/07/2005]
Crafting the future
Today, Live 8 will focus attention on the plight of Africa and the need to do something to help. But the links between a Yorkshire farmhouse and small workshops in Africa have already forged a business that Sir Bob would be proud of. Sharon Dale reports
There's a world of difference between their idyllic farmhouse in Summerbridge, near Harrogate, and some of the poorest parts of Africa, which Jonathan Knocker and Hazel Burek call their second home.
"Africa does pull you back. You do fall in love with it," says Jonathan.
Like many who visit the continent they have been captivated by its beauty and haunted by the poverty they saw when they ventured away from the carefully herded tourist trips.
"It is the most beautiful place. Those big plains, endless skies and starry nights make it romantically fantastic, but the poverty is shocking. We've been off the beaten track and talked to people who have less than nothing. That also stays with you."
Unlike many of us who feel impotent in the face of such an immense problem, Jonathan and Hazel are doing something about it and their company has given a boost to some of the most impoverished local economies and secured work for some of the poorest people.
It was a holiday to Zambia two years ago that started the idea for the business, which sells fairly traded homeware made in southern and eastern Africa.
"We were staying in a hunting lodge and saw a beautiful wall hanging of guinea fowl and we desperately wanted to get one," says Hazel, 43.
"We were told it had been made by Tribal Textiles and we made a trip to Mfuwe to find it."
Tribal Textiles is run by British expat Gilly Lightfoot, an artist specialising in batik and is a leading employer in an area, where unemployment runs at 95 per cent.
"We were so impressed we bought lots of presents to give to family and friends and when we got back we came up with the idea of importing Tribal Textiles products to the UK because they didn't have a distributor here," says Jonathan.
The Africa House was born a year ago. The internet-based business buys homeware from African craftspeople and sells it to a largely British market. It's a small scale version of what Sir Bob Geldof wants the G8 leaders to do, as he demands that they break down restrictive trade barriers with the continent to breathe life into the economy there.
"I think what Sir Bob is doing is great and it's wonderful that we now have this focus on Africa. My opinion is that sustained development in Africa can't be achieved by handing out big wads of cash.
"That's OK in dire emergencies, but what these people are crying out for is commercial trade. Trade, fair trade, will help them go forward.
"There have been problems with corruption but that is coming under control through empowerment of the local population. They are standing up and saying they want to fight corruption. A classic example is Daniel Arup Moi in Kenya. People voted against him for someone who promised to fight corruption."
Jonathan and Hazel make regular trips to Africa to meet suppliers and ensure that they subscribed to the fairly traded ethos. Among other things, their website now sells furniture and textiles from Zambia, rugs from Kenya and metal garden accessories from a band of disabled polio victims in Tanzania who call themselves the Wonder Welders.
They also take orders for furniture and rugs on a bespoke basis and have a product locator service, which offers to help people locate products they have seen while on holiday in Africa.
Although there is a lot of ethnic style homeware on the website, there are also fashion-led pieces, including table linen and cushion covers that wouldn't look out of place in Habitat.
"Gillie has her eye on trends and knows what will appeal, which helps enormously," says Hazel.
Gillie's products are made in a traditional way and although her base is described as a factory, it is in fact a large cottage industry, where fabrics are handpainted by artists, baked in an oven, washed and left to dry in the African sun.
Regular visits to Africa and the email links to the continent have strengthened bonds. "We go and say hello and see their working environment to see if its safe and ensure that the staff are paid a good wage.
"There are some people that we aren't prepared to work with and that's where our ethical stance takes priority over our commercial stance," says Jonathan, 43.
He is a former export trade financier for Lonhro and spent two years based in Malawi, later moving to work for an African conservation charity in Kenya. He and Hazel met when they worked as fundraisers for a British charity.
Jonathan, who has an MBA, has used his business experience to advise some of his suppliers. He says: "The idea is to work with companies on a long-term basis to help them develop and expand through our orders, so they can recruit more workers and therefore have a long term effect on reducing poverty in the area.
"The value of providing work for someone in somewhere like Kenya is six-fold compared to here in how it can provide for an extended family.
"A job is crucial because there is no social security, no alternative support."
To hammer home the importance of buying from Africa, The Africa House website, has point of sale information about the people it works with and the countries they come from.
In Zambia, it reveals that the life expectancy is 35 years, 50 per cent of the population is unemployed and 86 per cent of people live below the poverty line.
"Trading with good companies like Tribal Textiles has all sorts of positive repercussions," says Jonathan.
"We visited a school which serves that area and it was just a thatched shelter with a blackboard, which could cope with 30 children. Because it had 400 pupils they had to be taught in shifts and could only go to school a couple of mornings or afternoons a week.
"They've just had another classroom built by Tribal Textiles, which has doubled the capacity."
The Africa House is also planning to expand, but slowly.
"The next stage in our development is moving into wholesale and we are looking at increasing our suppliers, possibly looking at some in Uganda," says Jonathan.
"We won't be trading with South Africa because that's not really a developing country. It's fairly well established. The idea is to work with countries that really need as much assistance as they can get in developing their industries."
As Live 8 belts out an uncompromising message to world leaders today, Jonathan and Hazel Knocker can feel that in their own small way, they have reached out and made a difference.
The Africa House website can be found at www.theafricahouse.com
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