Oct 8

Benin is a developing country and “Espoir de Demain” (EDEM) is a very apt name for this local NGO: hope for tomorrow is what it is all about. Benin needs to train a whole battalion of engineers, doctors and professionals to take this country to the next level. For all the proposed infrastructure improvement projects of today, locally there isn’t yet the talent available to deliver. Meanwhile, primary schooling is free and secondary school fees have just been reduced. The demographics mean that the young outnumber the old so the challenge is to make sure that as many children as possible get to benefit from this education so they can help their country grow.

EDEM is doing just that by supporting orphans and vulnerable children who are those most at risk from not being able to benefit from the education. Whilst 65% of boys and 58% of girls attend the (free) primary school, for a country with 47% of the population living below the poverty line (1.25$/day), it is not surprising that attendance rates drop to 34% of boys and 23% of girls for the (fee paying) secondary schools. Those fees are relatively little compared to developed countries. To get a child through secondary school (fees, uniform, equipment and books) would cost less than two euros per week per child!

I met with Herve from EDEM today to get an overview of the charitable “offer”, how it’s positioned, what other NGOs are doing and not only what is done today but what can be done tomorrow. We have plenty of ideas for the future but whilst the ideas are free, implementing them is not and EDEM would need to achieve more funding. In order to achieve more funding EDEM needs to have robust financial and operational systems in place that can give confidence to the donors that their donations are being used correctly. That’s where I might be able to help.

Towards the end of the day I got to see Porto Novo. I saw Nigerian immigrants attending a service in English in their makeshift church and Catholic nuns herding their charges into theirs. The Moslem call for prayer drew my attention to the mosque which, like most of the other buildings is principally a concrete block except for the roofing. There are not many paved roads – dirt tracks prevail – but with people selling wares from shelters and shacks that line the streets, with wandering merchants balancing their stock on their head and with the aroma of bar-be-ques here and there, the whole town seems like one big street market!

Photo: downtown Porto Novo.