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If you have a bright idea to help an overseas
country, the best way to get it taken up is to take
it up yourself. That is what Adam Brett has
done.
The idea was that Ugandan farmers should use the
sun to dry their surplus fruit and then sell it
abroad. Some of the farmers thought it a crazy
idea. Who would want to buy shrivelled old mango
and pineapple when they could buy the real, juicy
thing?
British shopkeepers were unimpressed also –
until they saw the bags of dried fruit being
snapped up from market stalls.
Adam who was born in Uganda went to Cambridge
University and got involved with the Footlights
Club. This set him off on a career as stage
manager. Then he went back to Uganda, where his
father engaged him as his assistant on a British
aid project concerned with fruit processing –
canning, juicing, drying.
Africa was littered with drying projects that
didn’t work. Dryers had tended to be large, drying
tonnes a week. Adam experimented with a drier for
25 kilogrammes: essentially a goat proof box which
a village carpenter could make, and women could
easily load.
He teamed up with the friend of a friend,
Angello Ndyaguma, who had a small import-export
business and knew how to deal with government
officials and transport arrangements. They formed
Fruits of the Nile, where Angello is managing
director. Kate Sebag, who was working in Uganda for
the agency Tools for Self Reliance, also got
involved.
Adam travelled back and forth, picking up dried
fruit at Gatwick, storing it under the stairs at
his home, selling it at Camden or Spitalfields,
then doing a bit of stage management. He decided he
couldn’t compete against currants and raisins in
the home-baking field, so he sold his fruit in
packets as chewy snacks. He financed his journeys
by selling secondhand computers in Uganda when he
went there.
In 1988 he had happened to meet two consultants
from the Natural Resources Institute, now part of
Greenwich University. The upshot was that he and
institute experts produced handbooks showing
farmers how to build a drier, how to dry fruit, how
to do accounts. Instruction cards in colour show
what saleable dried pineapple/mango/banana looks
like. Fruits of the Nile also organises instruction
workshops.
In
1993, Adam and Kate decided to go into business
full time. Kate’s family put in some money, which
has been augmented by ploughing back profit. Adam
is currently raising low-interest loans in
addition. Having to pay for stock in Africa way in
advance of being paid for it remains a problem.
Nevertheless Adam is confident of a growing market
for dried tropical fruits. “People love them,” he
says.
He and Kate pay suppliers 55 per cent of the
money they receive, which means they have to run an
efficient, streamlined operation. Farmers get a
guaranteed market, which has enabled one women’s
co-operative to set up a health clinic from its
fruit-drying profits. Farmers are diligent about
quality.
A visiting journalist mentioned Tropical
Wholefoods to women who were growing oyster
mushrooms near the Rwandan border but having
problems selling them fresh. As a result, Kate
Sebag went to see them and offered to buy dried
mushrooms. There proved to be a small but growing
market in the United Kingdom, so that 50 groups of
women in the area now have a new way to earn cash
for their families.
Adam and Kate have widened their sources of
supply. They buy from the Cercle des Secheurs
(Dryers’ circle) founded by the Centre Ecologique
Albert Schweitzer in Burkina Faso. The circle had
more dried fruit available than it was selling.
The Commonwealth Science Council got Adam and
Angello to hold a workshop in Guyana, and they
showed their good faith by buying produce there and
then. Tropical Wholefoods now buy dried mango and
starfruit from Tropical Organics, a local fairtrade
company. Both new suppliers have introduced
appropriate techniques at low cost to rural
communities and guarantee markets for their
produce.
Once in Britain, the dried fruit goes into cold
storage, to kill any trace of fruit fly. Then it
goes to Tropical Wholefoods’ well-equipped new
warehouse in South London and then via wholesalers
to about 800 health food shops, and to Oxfam,
Traidcraft and European fair-trade organisations.
Annual turnover is over £250,000. One observer
writes: “I would think the supermarkets will
eventually wake up to the potential.”
Most fruit is sold in packets but a growing
amount is used in manufactured products. Fulwell
Mill Bakery in Sunderland, which employs disabled
people, makes dried banana into a bar called Banana
Fruitjack. This sells at the rate of 150 cases a
month.
Angello Ndyaguma writes from Uganda: “Most
farmers engaged in fruit drying have managed to
send their children to school and have acquired
radios and black and white television sets. A
number boast solar electricity in their homes. They
never used to have these things. And this is a
result of Tropical Wholefoods finding markets for
their products.”
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