Trade for Development Centre is a programme of Enabel, the Belgian development agency.
Trade for Development Centre is a programme of Enabel, the Belgian development agency.
We believe that fair and sustainable trade are a way to decrease poverty. It gives smallholders in the South the opportunity to develop in a sustainable way. We work around three main themes: producer support, sharing information and raising awareness.
Here you will find our most recent publications in order of appearance. The last published will be in the front.
April 27th, Yeyasso, Fairtrade Belgium, Galler Chocolaterie and Enabel’s TDC organised a webinar on the living income gap in the cocoa sector. Measuring this gap between the real household incomes of producers and what is considered a decent income is really important. It can also be a tool to better define policies to support producers, by cooperatives of other stakeholders.
Enabel’s Trade for Development Centre coaches producer cooperatives and Business support organisations (BSO’s) in business management, finance and marketing. The TDC has also started to support cooperatives in calculating the living income gap in producers’ households.
The Trade for Development Centre (TDC) wants to increase its impact. That’s why it’s not limiting itself to directly supporting cooperatives in the South. The TDC also assists ‘business support organisations’, which in turn support other organisations locally. We zoom in on this lesser-known, but no less effective form of support.
For many years now, we’ve known that the way we consume has negative consequences on both people and planet. The 2013 Rana Plaza collapse, which killed more than 1,100 people working for major clothing brands, shone a light on the appalling working conditions in sweatshops. On 27 September 2022, Enabel’s TDC hosted a conference on ethical clothing, followed by a fashion show. The event was attended by more than 150 people. The debates focused on two key questions: Have working conditions in the textile industry improved since the collapse of Rana Plaza? And is Made in Europe a guarantee of decent work?
Cocoa cooperatives in Côte d’Ivoire have been receiving coaching from Enabel’s Trade for Development Centre (TDC) for many years. What challenges are these cooperatives facing? How does coaching work in practice? How can we increase its impact on the whole sector? These were the topics discussed by producers and coaches during a round table in Brussels.
During the Fair Trade Week, 2022, the Belgian roaster Koffie/Cafés Rombouts is launching “Virunga Coffee”, a fair trade coffee created in collaboration with the coffee farmers of the Virunga National Park in Congo. Since 2020, Enabel’s Trade for Development Centre has supported two cooperatives in the region that supply coffee to Rombouts:
