Apr 26, 2022
Celebrating first anniversary of Moringa Cluster Uganda
Moringa Cluster Uganda is celebrating its first birthday. A year ago, moringa producers from Uganda joined forces with a mission to become a global hot spot for the high quality moringa products with transparent production and value chains. The initiative brought together a group of Uganda’s producers with their own farms, namely Priceless Farms, Tecoma Uganda, Sage, Mugesu limited and ATU-LI. Today, they work with thousands of smallholder farmers to help them achieve the required products’ quality and finding the market. They have even taken a step forward: the agribusiness members of the cluster have implemented a digital transparency tool phy2app to easily communicate the details about the products and the origins, processes, as well as their social and environmental impacts to their buyers.
Moringa Cluster Uganda is not just another cluster initiative. The members are passionate about their goals and have a realistic plan. In the first year, cluster has already provided several education and workshop events to help the farmers with their business and to raise the reputation of Uganda’s moringa products.
Dr. Gerd Meier zu Köcker, the Director ClusterAgentur Baden-Württemberg and Cluster Observatory Africa, who is working with the cluster, is impressed about the progress they have already made: “Clustering normally takes a while until it works. What impresses me most is that we already have plenty of success on the individual firm base. In addition, we succeeded to build up a real Moringa Uganda community. All firms are competitors but also partners and trust each other. And all this happened after only one year of work.”
We talked to George William Itiamat, the Director of Tecoma Uganda, who passionately helps the moringa producers and hopes to raise awareness about the moringa health benefits and its effectiveness in fighting the malnutrition of poor and vulnerable communities. He revealed that the driver behind the initiative was that they simply could not do enough on their own. Tecoma has been promoting moringa for almost ten years but their struggle has been stiff. They couldn’t get through to authorities about the benefits moringa could offer to the local people, business- and health-wise. And consequently, the support for the farmers in not yet sufficient.
The moringa producing companies are currently mainly focused on selling in the international market in order to survive. As the social entrepreneurship, Tecoma Uganda is focusing on the local farmers and would like to support them to meet the production costs. In any case, if moringa from Uganda wants to earn its place in the market as a quality and transparent product, key standards and certifications should be followed. Thus one of the goals is to establish the quality production protocols for the Uganda moringa farmers, based on the already high-quality work of the larger producers like Priceless farms.
“We expect to establish a common production standard with all members, and that would be the key for the adequate production quality for the external markets”, adds George. Currently farmers have different production styles, but if they harmonise their production with a high criteria, that would finally lead to a bigger market for the local moringa products. Establishing good market would consequently advance the importance of moringa in the country as well as help the locals to benefit from its nutrition.
The cluster will provide knowledge and means to standardise the production, help with certifications and support the market development. It will also make the moringa more visible to the policy and decision makers. Working together in a cluster has additional benefits of collecting knowledge and making it available to everyone who needs it. “We need to support each other to support the local people. Two heads are better than one,” says George. “We see a lot of potential ahead of us. So, the next time we speak, you’ll be amazed.”
We are already amazed and look forward to see the progress in the second year of this successful initiative.
This article has been written with the assistance from Martina Vilhar.
About Tecoma Uganda
Teso Enterprise Consulting and Marketing Association (TECOMA) is a moringa producer and an NGO from Uganda, dedicated to improve livelihoods of rural communities. They run many social projects to raise awareness about moringa as a healthy dietary supplement and have increased its use in public schools, among malnourished children, elderly people and AIDS patients in the West Nile region and North of Uganda.
Read about moringa benefits and market:
1. Moringa: a gift from nature
2. Global Moringa Products’ Market
3. Moringa in natural cosmetics
4. Agricultural cultivation of moringa
