Ajddigue Women's Argan Cooperative

In 1997, with the help of both the Canadian and Japanese Embassies, Zoubida founded the Ajddigue cooperative. It started with 16 members, and quickly became the first company in the region to produce argan oil commercially for cosmetics and cooking. It was also the first argan cooperative to introduce mechanized processing methods.

During the early years, Zoubida concentrated on establishing and promoting the business. She recruited additional international investors, including the Belgian Embassy in Morocco, to support Ajddigue’s processing plant. The investments came at an 80/20 match, with the cooperative contributing the larger share. She also created a comprehensive literacy program for the cooperative’s members.

The concept caught fire and spread. Other argan cooperatives popped up in southern Morocco. In 2003, Zoubida founded an economic interest group (EIG) called Targanine to “federate the first cooperatives and help them market their product.” Ajddigue was a founding member of the Targanine EIG. All this activity led the Moroccan government and the European Union to launch Le Projet Arganier (The Argan Tree Project) in 2005, which financed cooperative purchase of oil processing hardware and related training.

Ajddigue was able to use its relationship with Le Projet Arganier to build a laboratory and streamline its member education programs. More importantly, this relationship helped the cooperative increase oil output nearly sevenfold, expand membership, find new markets, bargain collectively, and almost double member dividends and wages.

As Ajddigue matured, it learned how to strengthen its core competency with outside collaboration. Empowering and employing women to harvest and process quality argan products is what it does well. Its skills at marketing, distributing, and exporting were always a little shaky. “By pooling available resources under an economic interest group, Ajddigue has been able to leverage its resources more powerfully.” Today, Ajddigue is part of a new EIG.