Model swaps catwalk for mining trade
Camara digs deep to pave way for women
LEAVING behind chic gowns and catwalks to stomp in the mud in heavy work boots, former Guinean fashion model Tiguidanke Camara has become West Africa’s first woman mine owner. In the small forest village of Guingouine, in the west of Ivory Coast, Camara runs a team of 10 geologists and labourers who are probing the soil for gold deposits.
She readily wades into a mucky pond to help take laboratory samples.
“When I was a model, I showed off for the jewellers. They have licences in Africa to provide their precious stones,” Camara said amid a swarm of gnats, still youthful and trim in her 40s.
She does not recall any macho male resistance to her rise in an industry almost devoid of women, though bemused men have been prompted on occasion to ask whose assistant she might be.
“When it got too much one day, I had to produce my CEO’s ID badge!” she protested mildly.
Camara said modelling for jewellery firms had roused her curiosity.
“I started to ask myself questions. What if African men or women took charge of business in the mining sector?
“I’m the answer to that question,” the entrepreneur said.
Inspired to join forces, she and a number of other women last year created an association of Women in the Mining Network of Ivory Coast (Femici by its French acronym), while Camara is also seen as an example to village girls.
Camara had to dig deep into savings to launch her Tigui Mining Group in 2010 and to acquire two licences to prospect for gold in her homeland. Then last year she followed up with a mining concession to look for gold in Ivory Coast, which she has turned into her base in West Africa.
In Guingouine, inhabitants have started to dream of the big changes that could benefit the village if the site proves to be rich in gold and a mine is opened.
“Guingouine means happiness [in the local Yacouba language], but we lack everything,” village chief Alphonse Doh said.
“The school of six classes is a shed without electricity.
“Women in labour have to be taken in wheelbarrows 10km to the nearest health centre.”
For the chief, opening a mine could transform the lives of thousands of people.
In the meantime, Camara has encouraged the women of the village to form a cooperative, providing them with agricultural equipment and two solar panels.
“We are very pleased with this cooperation,” Elise Kpan, who runs the Women of Guingouine association, said. “The cooperative has enabled villagers to place their farming produce on the market easily and to make money”.
The mining sector, dominated by the production of manganese (two mines) and gold (five mines) has been growing for a decade in Ivory Coast.
Women are poorly represented in Ivorian mining, where they account for just 112 of some 6 000 jobs directly involved in the sector and about 400 of the 30 000 connected secondary jobs.
Concerned women have bonded to improve this state of affairs.
“If I flourish in the mining sector, it’s because I have benefited from the welcome that men gave me,” Camara said.
Asked what quality most helped women succeed in business, she was quick to say: “Passion.”