WHAT MEN DO WOMEN CAN EQUALLY DO: EXAMPLE FROM SIERRA LEONE

[Mohamed Sidie Sheriff]

Regina Sheriff is self employed at her own cocoa plantation in Kpandebu village, eastern Sierra Leone, where she is settled with her husband who works as a teacher in the village primary school.
She shares with her husband the responsibility of taking care of their 5 children and 6 other dependants, including her ageing mother and her husband’s sick father. As the only survivor of her late father’s children after the war, Regina is now the sole inheritor of a three hectare cocoa farmland where she makes her living from the cultivation, processing and export of cocoa.

Beyond her earning from farm work, Regina is also entitled to a share of profit in the Munafa Cocoa Cooperative which buys and exports her produce and provides her, along with the other Munafa cooperative members, the skills, services and information required to add value, price and profit to the produce they sell.

The Munafa Cocoa Cooperative is one of three supported since 2010 under the export promotion component of the Rural and Private Sector Development Project financed by the World Bank.
In my video recording on 11/11/11 as part of the One Day on Earth global filming promotion by the World Bank which is also aligned to the ThinkEqual campaign, Regina says the Rural and Private Sector Development Project in Sierra Leone has built her capacity to better cultivate and process quality cocoa beans for export. She says this job means a lot to her. Part of her income from cocoa go to supporting her children in school and providing the daily food on her family’s table as well as expenses on health, transport, among other necessities.

Regina believes that women’s low income and limited contribution to the affairs and needs of the family, community and country is a major reason for prejudice against women. Now a successful entrepreneur, Regina says she is poised on correcting by action the stray notion that “what men can do women cannot equally do".