Location
Benin
Topic
Business Regulation and Policy, Women's Economic Empowerment, Youth's Economic Empowerment
Beneficiary
Chambre de Commerce et d'Industrie du Bénin
Status
Completed
Year
2021
The production of honey plays a significant role in Benin’s economy and way of life. Benin produces about 300,000 litres or 420 tonnes per year of honey representing 25,536 hives, 5,565 beekeepers and 4,803 beekeeping households for an average 4.6 hives per beekeeper. However, the apiculture sector lacks a strong organisational centre.
Given this situation, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Benin (CCIB) asked for assistance from the ICR Facility to enhance institutional capacity to improve the help they provide to beekeepers and other businesses and to support inclusion of women and youth, specifically in the beekeeping sector, through the establishment of a strong PPD.
The technical assistance delivered by the ICR Facility aimed at achieving two objectives. First, increase the capacity of CCI Benin staff which provides business support to enterprises in Benin. The training focused on the acquisition of new tools and approaches to business support, and the implementation of the Gender Equality and Social Inclusion approach in the actions of the CCI Benin. Second, the intervention supported creation of a cluster on the apiculture sector in the north of the country.
Thanks to the ICR intervention CCIB has integrated a gender dimension into their processes to serve their members as well as other institutional partners. A gender focal point has been designated and this person supervises processes, documents, and forms so that they are in line with gender best-practices. This serves as a basis to formally develop with partners a gender policy for the chamber.
The ICR intervention also brought to light concrete opportunities to develop the apiculture cluster in the north of the country. CCIB’s staff is now well positioned to keep the cluster development work using the methods and tools acquired. A new cluster manager position has also been created.
