RAFFIA 2 RICHES
Ikot Ekpene is known as a regional centre of commerce, with notable exports of palm products, especially palm oil, kernels, raffia products including raffia fibers and its wine. Raffia is an excellent material use in fashion and in our homes. The flexibility and durability of the raffia fibre makes it an excellent basis for hats or handbags.
it is also used for agricultural purposes to tie vegetables, plants or flowers. The world has experienced a monumental shift in the way it operates due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Rather than act as a middleman within the supply-chain, we give artisans direct ownership over client relations and sales. This independent third party positioning allows Raffia 2 Riches to best mediate a fair industry for both brands and artisans, channeling market forces as a means for sustainable change.
THE GOAL: Raffia 2 Riches aims to reduce poverty and conserve the environment by promoting forest raffia products and linking them to markets, thereby improving livelihoods.
About Raffia 2 Riches
Raffia to Riches is social enterprise that uses waste to promote environmental sustainability, community engagement and education within Nigeria and the surrounding areas. Raffia 2 Riches is a peer-to-peer e-commerce platform that connects offline artisans in Nigeria to online consumers using a simple mobile phone. Raffia 2 Riches empowers crafts men and women to participate in the global marketplace. We connect artisans to lucrative retail markets by uniting cultural institutions who identify talent with global retailers who purchase products. Our innovation leverages existing communications technology and infrastructure to pioneer a completely new marketplace. This new marketplace revolutionizes the way money and goods are exchanged during international trade, creating economic opportunity and increased profits for vendors, savings for consumers, and profit for Raffia 2 Riches. This virtual marketplace allows users to share their business and sustainability profiles with buyers, traders, standards organizations, certification bodies, financiers and others.
We employ the circular economy model to provide workshops as well as providing outreach programmes to empower women and support vulnerable communities. We have our 4 bottom lines, Service, Solutions, Scale and Sustainability. We provide a fully integrated and sustainable livelihood platform to communities who desire to increase their incomes, gain access to social services, and build a roadmap for them and their families to get out of poverty.
Our platform consists of 3 basic building blocks, the key success factors to achieve scale and sustainability: design integration, skills training, and market access. (MADE)
MADE
- Market Access means we build access for the artisans’ products in the formal economy by penetrating both retail and corporate markets with a brand positioned as sustainable and handmade.
- Design Integration: The infusion of innovation into our materials and techniques creates value for our products and our brand. We are able to transform agricultural waste into stylish and functional home and household accessories. We use storytelling(Ekongke), arts, music and audio visuals to tell our stories.
- Empowerment of Women & Skills Training: We equip community artisans especially women with the necessary skills and tools to create the products launched in the market. We provide training, advisory services and business networks to support female entrepreneurs, to scale-up micro businesses into small and medium green enterprises. Furthermore, we also provide training for life skills, values formation, basic business management, and financial literacy.