This is the first of a series on Aloe Vera farming in Masindi District, in Uganda. Aloe Vera is a succulent plant that is mostly used for medicinal, and cosmetic purposes.
“What’s this?”
I thought it was an innocent question and I was expecting a simple answer, you know, one of those that make you slap your forehead and go, “Duh! I knew that!”.
I was standing in my mother’s garden. The weather was cool this particular August morning, and a light fog was rising from the surrounding deep forest. I was trying to chase away the morning chill with heavy sips from the tea cup in my hand.
My mother paused from weeding a row of beans and looked up. I was standing in a row of prickly plants that looked like pineapple but had no fruit. There were four rows across and about 15 plants deep.
“Aloe Vera,” she said with a somewhat defeated sigh, “that’s Aloe Vera.”
Somehow, I knew there was more to the story.
About 4 years earlier, a man called Hajji Ali Sessanga, formed the Uganda Commercial Aloe Vera Farmers Association in Kampala and started soliciting farmers around the country to buy and start planting aloe vera seedlings in large quantities. (More about Ali Sessanga in a later part of the series). Sessanga convinced farmers that there was a ready foreign market and that large quantities of the processed aloe gel would be sold at a good price, after the aloe matures in 18 months. His sales pitch was certainly enticing to farmers many of who made less than 500 dollars a year. The possibility of tripling or quadrupling one’s income in one year singularly on a one-crop investment was too enticing to ignore.
Breaking Down the Scheme
For the sake of accuracy and simplification, I will focus on the affected farmers in Masindi District. However, the numbers from Masindi can be extrapolated for use with other districts around the country. For currency conversion: 1,750 Ugandan Shillings is equivalent to one US Dollar.
Sessanga advertised on radio, baiting farmers with promises of getting rich quick. Interested farmers were asked to pay a 5,000 shilling membership fee before getting access to the seedlings. This membership, however, provided no guarantees nor was it a specifically binding agreement. After a membership card was offered, the farmers were free to purchase as many seedlings as they could afford (this was encouraged) at a price of 1,500 shillings each. One acre of aloe vera can accommodate about 1,600 plants. The average aloe vera acreage per farmer in Masindi District is estimated at about 0.75 acres. On average, each participating farmer in Masindi invested about 1.8 milion shillings (roughly $1,028) in aloe vera. This is a lot of money for a peasant farmer. This is not counting the time invested in weeding and upkeep of these gardens for nearly three years. Now multiply that effort by the roughly 1,000 farmers who participated in Masindi District alone.
Under normal conditions, aloe vera matures for harvest in about 18 months. It can then be harvested 3 to 4 times a year. In the healthy loam soil of Masindi, yields of the aloe vera leaves weighing about 1.5Kg were not unusual. A healthy aloe plant, produces three to five leaves per harvest, or up to 15 leaves per year for every plant. For every kilo farmers were offered 3,000 Ugandan Shillings. The average farmer stood a chance of making $20,000 and $26,000 per year on an acre of aloe vera. With that kind of a potential jump in income, it’s a wonder more farmers in Masindi District did not sign up for aloe vera.
A Call to Action
After hearing about the plight of the aloe farmers, I went around the district to meet with some of the farmers and see the size of their harvests. I was disheartened to see the effort and time that the farmers put into planting and maintaining their gardens; and that they had little to show for it. After several visits, I gathered some facts on how many farms and farmers were affected, the promises made to them and the potential economic impact that had affected the area.
Before coming to Uganda, I had a chance meeting with Marsha Wulff , founder of Africeuticals™ , who has invested in marketing African medicinal plants in the US. I decided to seek her professional opinion on the success of marketing aloe vera in Uganda. I sent her a report on the farmers along with high resolution photos of the plantations that I had visited. Wulff passed the report around to her colleagues and after four months, the consensus was reached that it was difficult to help the farmers get an international market for their aloe gels without a processing plant near the growing fields. There was already a glut of aloe vera on the international market and African aloe vera was not economically viable as transportation costs added to the cost of the raw material purchase itself. There is also the added costly hurdle of getting the international aloe vera certification before any international commercial partnerships could be aligned.
I spent a considerable time researching the world-wide aloe vera industry and it’s many complexities. Later, I met with coordinators within the region to pass along my findings. Since Masindi is a large district, there was a sort of rudimentary organization with the participating members. Coordinators were appointed region-wide as a way to quickly disperse information. I arrived late to the meeting after a long, bumpy matatu ride from Kampala. There was a small gathering of farmers who were desperate for any kind of good news, and were none too pleased to hear what I had to say. Nonetheless I delivered the facts of my findings.
I explained what they were up against. I took care not to make any promises that I could not keep.
The best scenario and outlet for the farmers was to have them create their own local market for their processed products. A process that would involve bringing a processing plant to the region as well as the various components to process and package the myriad of aloe-based finished products like soaps, tea, lotions, gels, and drinks. The very same processing plant I found out, that Sessanga himself claimed to have procured as early as April of 2007. Jane Nafula, reporting for Uganda’s The Monitor newspaper found that:
Sessanga said the machine worth $300,000 (Shs540m) would process Aloe Vera into toothpaste, medicinal liquids, cosmetics and animal feeds. He said members would also export Aloe Vera flowers to Sudan where there is a market for it. The flowers are used in making Aloe Vera herbal tea.
The products would be geared for the local African market. Another advantage of bringing the factory to the region would be the secondary and tertiary economic impact it would have on the region. The factory would employ a small subset of workers while farmers would also employ more farm hands to help harvest their aloe crop or to plant and maintain additional acreage. In essence a processing plant serving 1000 farmers would in effect impact a community of about 5000 directly and more indirectly.
While I saw the upside if a plan could be in place; the financial, logistical, and project management hurdles are overwhelming. Over the next few weeks, I will cover what I have discovered in my efforts to assist these farmers find international markets for their product. It has been almost six months since I encountered these farmers. In that time, I have learned a lot in regards to Africa’s inability to get a fair deal in regards to international agricultural trade.
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TMS Ruge is one of the founding members of Project Diaspora: an organization that proposes a new model for working with Africa propose a new model. There are over 167 million Africans in the Diaspora. As of 2007, financial remittances by these Africans topped $40 billion annually. That’s capital that’s directly involved in the sustainability of lives—through the stimulation of education, finance, health, and social sectors. We believe this model is far more effective in changing the Africa’s economic landscape. The continued direct involvement of Africa’s Diaspora community is our solemn mission.
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