By Betsy Ramser Jaime
‘Sammuel Aidoo is my name, I am a married man with three children.’ As the eldest child in his family, with three sisters, and two brothers, Sammuel helps provide for his younger siblings to receive an education. He shares, ‘I became self employed on September 5th 2005 after I completed my apprenticeship work at University of Cape Coast fault of maintenance section and bakery business is one of the great opportunity jobs for me.’
Sammuel’s grandmother was a baker, and he started learning from her from the time he was 10 years old. Then, his wife also became a baker, but was unable to work once she became pregnant because of the high temperatures. As a result, she handed over her responsibilities to her husband. Sammuel shares, ‘At the moment my wife handing over the job to me people started laughing at me saying that my wife has fooling me because in our community only female people do the bread business so why should I do such business, but I didn’t listen to them and worked hard to gain in the business to achieve one of the big container stores in our community, that container is now where we are working in. If you go to other regions in Ghana you could see that many male people do the bakery business, so I will say that I am the first male person to do a bakery business in our community, so now some of the elders in our community said I have set a good example for young boys in our community.’
In addition to running his family bakery, which earns the majority of his income, Sammuel also earns about 30% of his income from doing electrical work. On the side he also earns some extra money selling soft drinks and Fan Milk products.
Since joining the Zidisha community in August, 2020, Sammuel has raised 6 Zidisha funded loans, starting with $13 in August. With each additional loan, Sammuel has been able to increase his inventory of supplies for his business such as, ‘flour, margarine, yeast, sugar, baking soda, and soft drinks.’ Before partnering with Zidisha, Sammuel would find himself purchasing supplies 3 days a week, using up a lot of time and additional transportation costs. Now, with his Zidisha loans, he can purchase his supplies in bulk, and buys on a less frequent basis. Most recently, in November, he raised $762 and this will allow him to purchase his supplies on a monthly basis.
While he doesn’t have much free time these days, when he does have it, Sammuel enjoys doing research on the internet, playing games on his phone, and watching football matches.
Would you like to make a difference in the life of an entrepreneur like Sammuel? Make sure to head on over to our Browse Projects page to read about Zidisha business owners making a difference in their families and communities around the world.
