by Nanette Braun

12 June 1998

Bonn, Germany: When Maria-Luisa Shira got divorced, she had five children to take care of – and no money to feed them. Her mother provided support and a temporary home; Maria-Luisa sold cashew nuts. A loan application to start her own business was turned down, yet she persisted until she had saved enough money for two machines to produce hollow blocks. Nowadays, she produces 450 bricks a day, employs four staff and has built a house for her family. the first woman entrepreneur in Pemba in the North of Mozambique, Maria Luisa Shira participated in the management training provided by the Institute for the Promotion of Local Business (IDIL). Training for trainers and support for the Institute is in turn provided by UN Volunteer Jumar Balonkita from the Philippines. As a team member of a UNIDO project, he has worked for two years with IDIL.

Business promotion is crucial in Mozambique where 60% of the population are estimated to be unemployed and the per capita GDP is less than USD 100, making Mozambique one of the poorest countries in the world. Through Jumar and his colleagues, more than 1,000 persons in the Northern Cabo Delgado province have by now received training on how to be their own boss. The curriculum of the courses on setting up or improving business includes basic entrepreneurial know-how: Record keeping, devising business plans, and general management issues. Recently, the IDIL team has also embarked on a computer training scheme.

Training materials have to be kept simple: Almost half of the male population and even up to 80% of the women are estimated to be illiterate - a post-war reality in Mozambique that makes access to training and credit extremely difficult. The banks are reluctant to provide funding to local entrepreneurs, many of whom are considered "high-risk" debtors: returnee families, demobilised soldiers, women. Millions of people had to flee their homes during the war, seeking refuge in neighboring countries or in Mozambique’s safer areas. For them, the call was to start from scratch again - sometimes with the help of the IDIL team: "Thirteen new enterprises could be established through credit sources we managed to identify", says Jumar.

The UN Volunteer knows what he is talking about when it comes to establishing a sound financial basis: Government support for IDIL is marginal, so self-sustainability was the prime necessity for the institute too. Accounting services for the local hospital and feasibility studies provide the institute with a sufficient income by now - and some customers with an unexpected cash-flow: "When we published the results of a financial accountability study we had undertaken for the provincial Water Department, the Government was so embarrassed to be one of the main debtors that they paid immediately", recalls Jumar. "That’s what I call job satisfaction."