Others felt similarly overlooked. Yayra Agbofah, whose non-profit The Revival also operates in and around Kantamanto, says he raised €12,150 in public donations through GoFundMe, and secured €20,000 each from Bestseller Foundation and Zalando. Other brands that failed to donate “just proved their blatant neglect”, he says. “This was a massive disaster, and we were left alone to deal with it.”
Almost a year on, how far has Kantamanto recovered?
Despite the shortfall in public funding, Kantamanto Market was open for business within three months of the fire.
In the first two weeks after the fire, the Or Foundation says it spent $17,291 clearing debris (including the provision of four dump trucks per day from a private waste haulage company for one week), running relief tents for medical support (quickly scaling up to three tents) and sharing water and other provisions with impacted community members (average temperatures at this point were over 32 degrees Celsius). More than 2,000 people benefited from these services each day. From 6 January to 12 February, the non-profit registered 9,232 people for direct relief funds and started the structural rebuild of the market. From 15 January to 14 March, it transferred 50,000 Ghanaian Cedis (GHS) (approximately $4,500) to the Kantamanto Upcyclers Association (KUA) and individual relief funds of 2,500 GHS ($225) to 9,237 community members.
Similarly, Agbofah says The Revival was able to spend €16,300 on safety equipment for the people clearing debris, food and water for community members, temporary accommodation for six women working as kayayei who were displaced by the fire, direct cash support for 108 “highly affected” traders, and medical bills for six traders and four workers. A further €15,650 went towards infrastructure restoration, €18,400 to new machinery and micro-grants for traders, and €2,100 to bank fees. “Our approach was simple: support the people first, then rebuild the structures,” explains Agbofah.
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