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June 09, 2005
Trade with Africa
The Scottish Executive are to encourage the sale of fair trade products from Africa such as coffee, tea and sugar. This may be worthwhile although it looks very much like the usual New Labour gesture politics, where talk is substituted for action.
Africa produces many things that are never (or very seldom) seen in this country, especially agricultural products. For example I have occasionally found excellent fruit from Madagascar and the Ivory Coast at our local vegetable and fruit market, apparently transhipped from Marseilles, but the supermarkets only seem to buy from South Africa and to a lesser extent from the countries of east Africa.
If the government is sincere about helping Africa they should identify obstacles to trade and remove them so that supermarkets and shops can then start selling a much wider range of produce.
news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=616872005
Posted by Simon Holledge at June 9, 2005 07:04 PM
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