The mango orchard at Reo shows not only why women should be central to development, but how powerful is their collective force, once it is released and given its head.Beyond the orchard stands a mango drying plant, already in use with fruit from other locations. The women of Reo organised it, had it built, and learnt to operate it. Dried mangoes are not only irresistibly delicious, they can easily be packed for transport to markets where they command a good price.In Africa, where so many initiatives run into the ground, this has the air of a properly workable and profitable business. And it’s down to women – for so long the marginalised ones.The argument for empowering women in developing countries stems not just from equity, but from practicality. It is not only right and just that women should be given a voice, have the work they do recognised, and be treated with respect – the consequences of leaving them behind are dire for whole societies. Women who are illiterate and lack education tend to have larger and less healthy families, and a clear correlation has been shown between levels of gender inequality and poverty.That’s the negative side. But from a positive point of view, women’s energies are potentially dynamic.

In Africa especially, women have long played a role of great physical vigour in daily life, collecting firewood, collecting water – often from considerable distances – pounding grain such as millet, preparing food, cooking, and working in the fields.Yet their worth has traditionally not been acknowledged It is “the invisibility of unpaid work”. Make their effort visible and acknowledge it, and women can transform their situations. Most aid agencies, such as the British charity Tree Aid, which is financing the mango orchard at Reo, now put gender equality at the heart of their policies, but increasingly, African women are taking their future into their own hands.In a time of severe food shortages, when many men have left their villages to seek work elsewhere, and in a time of Aids, when many men are dying, women are playing a bigger role in many African countries. Women’s groups and communes are springing up and a striking figure is becoming evident that one might call the radical matriarch. She is probably middle-aged, and many times a grandmother; she is probably big physically, with a commanding and charismatic presence; she brooks no nonsense and has unquestioned authority; and she is politically conscious, with an unclouded perception of what needs to be done to help her sisters.In a fortnight in the Sahel, I met three such radical matriarchs, one of them the driving force behind the mango project at Reo. Her name is Jacqueline Bassolet and she chairs a women’s group called Ce Dwane Nyee, which in the local language, Ly?, means “strength comes from union”.Ms Bassolet has clear views on what women’s empowerment means for her community “We have to help and modernise our women,” she says. “A lot of them have not been to school, and their place was always regarded as by the hearth.

But agriculture is their first activity, so the first thing we have to do is better their conditions as farmers’ wives.”Her first project was to organise the manufacture of shea nut butter, a fatty substance from the nuts of the wild-growing shea tree, which is widely used in Africa as a cooking oil and a cosmetic; the women in the village now make it on a large scale and have won prizes for it. The mango orchard and the mango drying plant are even more ambitious, as they are long-term projects started from scratch; the women hope they will provide them with an income into their old age.The orchard was put in three years ago and this year several of the 200 grafted trees are in flower; in perhaps two years’ time they will start to produce harvestable fruit. It is only part of a substantial tree-planting exercise that Ce Dwane Nyee is carrying out with Tree Aid’s support, planting 6,500 saplings in 20 villages in this region where most of the natural woodland cover has been destroyed in the past 20 years.But the mango orchard is Ms Bassolet’s pride and joy It is tangible, you can see it emerging “I am happy here,” she says, and you can understand why. It is more than just a plantation of trees, it is the visible incarnation of the liberated energies of the women of her village, and you can feel it becoming a special place.”. It was a tough stock market baptism for Hannah, the 16-month-old daughter of our former business news editor, Teresa Poole. Introduced to stock-tipping in the worst year for equities for ages her portfolio fell by an average of 46 per cent.

Hannah had bad luck with Albert Fisher going into administration and British Energy going into meltdown (minus 97.7 per cent). Aggreko fell 60 per cent with a final blow on the last day of 2002 when the company said its chief executive had been killed in a car crash There was one success, though. Stanley Leisure, the betting group, soared 63 per cent on the benefits of proposed de-regulation. I like Noddy.” However, this throwaway comment proved useful and led to Chorion, which owns the rights to Noddy, being his first tip.Asked what else might be popular in 2003 he said: “toys” This led to his second tip Hamleys. Prompted for more he said: “I like videos.” He singled out the retailer Woolworths.