Markets

Many women’s informal businesses are limited due to lack of markets. This may be related to their lack of education and time as suggested above. In order to establish a marketing network, especially in the craft and production section, women must be aggressive through advertisement and research, things which women in the informal sector do not have time for. The networks established by market women, e.g. in Mwanga, in Kilimanjaro Region, work within the traditional marketing system while the crafts marketing system works within modern marketing system. Arusha offers a good example.

During my research in Arusha in 1988,1 found a group of women at Ngarenaro Catholic Church who had organized themselves as a production unit which produced high quality items such as crafts, table cloths and other decorative items for household use. Yet they had no market for such items - a great bottle net which threatened the existence of the group. This group of women could, for example, have sold their products to the tourist hotels in Arusha. Tourism in the Northern parts of the country is a ready made market for such products. But the women lacked the information and the skills to advertise their products. Modern marketing demands that we do so. People with commodities for sell cannot just sit around and wait for customers to come as they do at the market places.