The mighty baobab tree has provided food and shelter to Southern Africans for centuries. Now it is also providing a means of survival in a country ravaged by deforestation and hunger.
With famine looming, Malawi’s population look to the land for sustenance. But in many parts of the country where there were once forests, barren and brown land now stands unusable for agriculture.
One tree has survived the widespread deforestation of the country – the baobab, mainly because its porous stem makes it no good for firewood or charcoal production.
The mighty baobab – called malambe in Malawi – has provided food and shelter to Southern Africans for centuries. More than 30 traditional uses have been discovered, including using fibre from the bark for clothing and making flour from the pulp inside the fruit. In ancient times, men used to hide their families inside the hollow stems to protect them from hostile attackers. And nearly every part of the tree has one or more use in traditional medicine.
Today, Malawi’s population of 10-million ranks among the poorest in the world, with a gross domestic product of around US$200 per capita. More than 80% of its people live in rural areas, where the deforestation rate is the highest in the Southern African Development Community. Cutting down trees for charcoal production is a growing industry, particularly in areas where people cannot afford electricity.
The Wildlife and Environmental Society of Malawi, one of the country’s oldest NGOs, is naturally concerned about the deforestation and the charcoal industry. But it is equally concerned about the poverty of rural people.
“In 1997, several studies conducted by consultants showed there was virtually nothing that could be done to earn an income out of the natural resources in Malawi,” says the society’s executive director, Daulos Mauambeta.
The society had, however, launched several successful community projects in rural Malawi. It helped get some areas declared protected areas and started community ecotourism projects in the national parks. It also started a project to domesticate and sell guinea fowl, and one where women make baskets and furniture from bamboo.
“What we were trying to do was to ensure that natural resources are no longer depleted and the only way to do that successfully is to deal with the issue of poverty,” says Mauambeta.
In 1998 the society commissioned research into the commercialisation of a traditional drink called dambedza, made from soaking the baobab fruit pulp in water. Men swore the drink was a cure for hangovers and a cleanser for blocked bowels. Women drank boabab juice when they were pregnant and gave it to their children as a nutritional supplement.
The wildlife society’s research into the juice was funded by German Technical Cooperation. They sent samples of the juice to the University of Malawi and the Malawi Bureau of Standards for analysis and found it was rich in vitamin C, calcium and iron. The research then shifted focus to extending the shelf life of the juice, improving its taste by sweetening and removing the sediment completely. The Mwanza district in southern Malawi was identified as a site to launch a project to make malambe juice.
“Community mobilisation is always one of the steps we take to ensure the project is managed well. We gave people training in resource management and told them that if they didn’t look after the tree properly, they would lose it in the future,” says Mauambeta. “We set up village resource committees and it was these people who received the training. Our long-term goal is for these people to establish baobab forests.
“With these projects we always work with women first. In the rural areas, the men leave the villages to seek paid employment and the women and children are left behind. With our projects, women and children are always the first beneficiaries, so it makes sense that they are in the forefront of our activities.”
The society established a steering committee of villagers to oversee the project, and is planning to train them to establish themselves as a business by setting up a trust or private company.
The project started with five villages and now 13 are involved. About 18 000 people are involved in harvesting the fruit and making the juice.”We identified the villages based on the extent of the degradation, how heavily they had been affected by deforestation,” explains Mauambeta. “When the five started showing good results, the surrounding villages asked to become involved. Other donors saw our work and offered assistance. The United Nations Development Programme, for instance, helped to spread the project to other villages.”
The steering committee initially used the communities’ dividends from the project to give out small loans to people involved. But there were problems in recovering the money. The communities are now saving the money to build a small clinic and pharmacy and employ a health professional. They are also planning to use some of the money to repair boreholes and for road maintenance.
The juice is sold in supermarkets in most cities in Malawi. The project presently produces 2 000 litres a month, and is investigating refrigeration and storage to increase production. Access to water currently limits expansion of the enterprise as water is sourced from communal boreholes.
Villagers bring the fruit to a central point and get paid for it. After the juice is sold, 20% of the dividends goes directly to the producers, 30% to the communities involved and 50% is kept in a fund to ensure sustainability. Villagers can earn up to US$500 a year.
At the project site in Mwanza, the wildlife society has built a factory, a warehouse and a store for the fruit. Villagers are employed on a rotation basis to separate the shell from the white pulp inside. The shells are dried and used in fires to heat the pulp. It is then soaked and the seeds and juice are separated in cotton bag sieves. Sugar and preservatives – to increase shelf life – are added before the juice is bottled and labelled.
“So far we have trained about 160 people to do this work. The company has no full-time staff members. The plant is within walking distance of all the villages we work with,” says Mauambeta.”We are planning to split the production into different steps, outsourcing to communities the work of reducing the fruit to a pulp. Not only will we then save on production time, but we will be able to produce more. Labelling the bottles could also be outsourced.”
Mauambeta adds the project is encouraging the conservation and management of existing baobab trees. After the seeds are removed from the pulp at the factory, they are replanted so that communities ensure their business is sustainable. “Some of the trees we use are more than 100 years old. They fruit after five or six years, so the communities can see the benefit of their labour quite soon after planting.”
The wildlife society’s project is easily replicable. Delegations from other Southern African countries have visited the projects and taken the ideas home. Namibia now has guinea fowl domestication projects – and it is probably only a matter of time before baobab juice