Washington Business Winter 2018 | Washington Business | Page 43

business backgrounder | industry
And the AWB luncheon was just one of the stops on the
calendar during a busy season for the leaders of Alaffia,
a company that’s experiencing rapid growth and gaining
visibility, both in the U.S. and in Togo.
The same day, Alaffia leaders hosted David Gilmour, the
U.S. ambassador to Togo, for a tour and meeting with local
and state elected officials, as well as U.S. Rep. Denny Heck,
at the company’s manufacturing facility.
Despite stereotypes of villagers living in grass huts,
Africa is rapidly urbanizing, Gilmour told The Olympian
newspaper. Togo, he said, wants to become a business hub
akin to Dubai or Singapore, and Alaffia has blazed a trail in
part of Africa.
Later in the day, the ambassador plus the four members of
the Alaffia Empowerment Council and Alaffia co-founders
Olowo-n’djo Tchala and Prairie Rose Hyde sat in the
wings at the state Senate chambers to witness passage
of a resolution recognizing Alaffia’s work to improve the
standard of living in Togo and calling for increased trade
opportunities between the U.S. and Togo.
That evening, the group spoke at a symposium hosted
by Saint Martin’s University on the topic of using private
enterprise to alleviate poverty and advance gender equality.
And in August, Tchala and Hyde traveled to Lome, Togo
to participate in the 2017 African Growth and Opportunity
Act (AGOA) conference.
AGOA is a U.S. trade act enacted in 2000 that significantly
expanded U.S. market access for qualifying sub-Saharan
African countries. To qualify and remain eligible, a country
must be working to improve its rule of law, human rights
and respect for core labor standards. Each year, the
countries participating in AGOA meet for a summit.
The theme for this year’s conference was “The United
States and Africa: Partnering for Prosperity through Trade.”
a love story
There are few people better qualified to speak on the issue
than Tchala and Hyde. The couple met in 1996 when Hyde,
a Washington native and Peace Corps volunteer, ended up
in Tchala’s home village of Kaboli, Togo.
They fell in love, married, and moved to the United States
determined to find a way to alleviate poverty and improve
the standard of living in West Africa.
Hyde entered a graduate program studying international
agriculture and ethnobotany, the scientific study of the
relationship between people and plants, and Tchala — who
dropped out of school in sixth grade for financial reasons
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