The Colour of Fair Trade

I can remember reading someone saying that the colour of Africa is terracotta, a lush gorgeous reddy terracotta.

Here's a picture that mixes terracotta with a forest green and the bluest African skies.

That's all an introduction to a good post on fair trade by the Black Country Bloke.

Many nations of the South have had to agree to Structural adjustment programmes are an evil where nations are encouraged to sell off resources like water to global multi-nationals so they can get loans, reduced interest rates on loans and support from the rich North organisations like the World Bank. They privilege the rich over the poor and they are an evil of international trade. Nick Matthews writes:

Ghana would have been far better off without structural adjustment programmes and we still need real trade justice but in the meantime Divine chocolate is just that. It can be found in Oxfam shops and as the source it means that the Co-op sells more fair-trade chocolate than all the other supermarkets put together.

More important however is the relationship that has been built between the producers and the consumers based on the principle that the producers should be paid what they need rather than the market rate.

This is just one small step but it is a beginning as Marx said in the Critique of the Gotha Programme “after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly—only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”