How you can help

At Traidlinks, we take a very flexible approach to both the types of company we would like to collaborate with and the projects we engage in.

We do not always seek exact food sector to food
sector matches for company to company mentoring. Our key concern is to ensure that the type of project an Irish partner company engages in is meaningful for both the Irish and African businesses. If your company is interested in learning more about the Skills Exchange Programme or if you have any ideas of how you may be able to support Traidlinks please come and talk to us.

Our current need is for Irish companies that would be interested in taking part in the Skills Exchange Programme, primarily to cover 3 key areas in the Food Sector:

Food Safety Standards and Goods Manufacturing Practice (GMP).
Marketing and Branding: Supporting African companies to adjust their branding and packaging to better meet the needs of the export market.
Finance: Traidlinks does not either give loans or guarantee them. We play a facilitative role, supporting African companies to access finance at a reasonable rate. The companies which Traidlinks deal with are predominantly SME’s. Interest rates for borrowing for all types of companies in Africa are very high and prohibitive to business growth, eg rates in Uganda are up to 20%. Also many of the development banks focus on large developments and micro-finance.