Artisans in Mozambique are turning into entrepreneurs with the world at their feet. In the process their craft is saving forests that would otherwise be turned into charcoal.
José Fumo can’t speak or read much English, so he cannot read the article on his work in the February edition of the glossy international magazine, Elle Décor. The Portuguese-speaking Mozambican crafter came to the attention of the magazine at the New York Gift Fair.
Fumo – who uses the name Mabanda in the art world – is one of hundreds of crafters in Mozambique benefiting from an organisation called Aid to Artisans. Its objective is to help artisans improve their work, make it marketable and set up businesses.
In 1999 Aid to Artisans began working in Mozambique and discovered Mabanda’s work in a craft market. This year, he flew to New York to the International Gift Fair and negotiated a massive new contract.
“I was very nervous before I went to New York, even though my goods had been displayed four times before at international shows and they were all successful. But in New York, I found out that I was the most successful of the artisans on display,” he says. “One of the big shops in America is now negotiating a massive order with me.”
Mabanda now has seven employees and subcontracts work to two other artisans when he has large orders. His five children don’t work with him, but his wife helps by polishing and finishing his vases.
“Mozambique had no artisans in terms of that definition, but the country had many artists. People made goods based on their local culture and some of it, like Makonde art, became famous across the world,” says Abel Dabula, country coordinator for Aid to Artisans in Mozambique. “Aid to Artisans was looking for functional products which could be produced for a market larger than the art world.”
Mozambique has an abundant supply of wood perfect for making crafts. The country has ebony, sandalwood, ironwood and rosewood. Sandalwood is renowned for its smell and rosewood for its colour.
Aid to Artisans began its work in Mozambique by bringing in consultant designers from the US and Europe to help improve product lines for markets there. The designers’ brief was to find new lines inspired by what the artisans were already doing. The work had to remain essentially Mozambican.
The next step was to market the products. Aid to Artisans had booths at trade fairs in Europe and the US and took the Mozambican products to them. “Once we receive orders from people who have seen the products at the fairs, Aid to Artisans passes them on to the producers,” explains Dabula.
Before the organisation’s involvement, most artisans in Mozambique were working on their own at a subsistence level. There were no groups or associations, no taxes were paid, there was no tracking of costs and sales, and no entrepreneurs. “Aid to Artisans is not a funding organisation. We facilitate entrepreneurship and teach people how to run businesses,” says Dabula.
The organisation provides business training focused on entrepreneurial and business skills. It holds workshops regularly where people are taught bookkeeping, financial control and business analysis. It also trains artisans in market and product cycles – how to be innovative and creative to guard against products going stale.
The organisation plans to withdraw from Mozambique by 2004, and is hoping the artisans will be sustainable by then. A National Artisans Association is being set up in Mozambique and should take over the work. The new association’s launch is planned for September this year and the two organisations will work in parallel for a while.
“People are now coming to us with orders. We display our work every year at the New York Gift Fair, which is attended by 45 000 people,” says Dabula. “Mabanda went to New York this year and when he came back he said he now realises that he can’t just be a local craftsman, he must go bigger.
“Now he has bought a cellphone. He has no electricity in his home, so he has bought a solar panel to charge his phone. He is building his business step by step, and communication is the most important thing.”
There are now 19 groups of artisans whom Aid to Artisans regards as entrepreneurs and about 450 people are in direct contact with the organisation. The organisation publishes a quarterly bulletin that is distributed in all the provinces and reaches 1 350 people.
Mabanda’s best order so far was for 10 000 vases made by hand. Orders range in value from US$500 to $5 000. The foreign market is most interested in candleholders, vases, fruit bowls, trays, sugar bowls, butter dishes and small statues. During the months when there are no export orders, some of the artisans produce for the local market. But they face cultural problems: what sells well on the export market doesn’t necessarily sell well in Mozambique. “Our candleholders, for instance, are in demand overseas, but people don’t use them in their own homes. They’re more likely to use an empty tin or jar,” says Dabula. “We are presently working with South African designers on textile design. We want to get into the Southern African market with textiles, paper mâché and wood.”
Dabula interprets for Mabanda. The artisan used to be a farmer near Maputo, and regularly removed pieces of sandalwood from his fields in order to plant his crops. He kept the pieces, thinking one day he would make something with them. His father had been an artisan who worked with sandalwood.
“I started with statues, but I didn’t know how to make the faces, they were all flat. So I went to my brother-in-law’s workshop in 1991 and he taught me to make a face. Then I began to make masks and they were very popular,” says Mabanda. In 1992 he began work for a businesswoman who was supplying an Asian company with handcrafts. But the Asian company developed a way to produce the same goods using machines, so the businesswoman went bankrupt and Mabanda was unemployed. He learned a good lesson, though – he leaves a piece of natural wood unpolished on every product he makes so that machines cannot copy his work and he can recognise copies.
After his boss went out of business, Mabanda kept making masks, selling them at a Saturday craft market and going door to door. In 1999 Aid to Artisans brought a marketing and design team to Mozambique and they saw Mabanda’s products in a local market and liked them. They invited him to join the project.
“At first they checked to see if I could reproduce the work to the same quality every time. Then they brought a French designer to work with me and the next year I began as Mabanda, the artist,” he says. “Then Aid to Artisans brought a designer from America and he told me people wanted things they could use. I had a vase that was designed like a body and the top had lips. He liked that one – it became my biggest line.”
Mabanda now exports to the US, Britain and Namibia. Until this year, all his orders came through Aid to Artisans. But during his trip to New York in January, he met a buyer and they now have direct contact.