Ofeibea Quist-Arcton
2 September 2002
interview
Johannesburg — Farouk Jiwa, 28 years old and a fourth generation Kenyan-Asian, went to Canada to study environmental biology. He returned home with a bachelor's degree and looked for a niche in the environmental market, which he found: making honey.
Sustainable bee keeping has become Jiwa's livelihood. Armed with self-confidence and determination, as well as his new skills and the will to succeed, Jiwa teamed up with two like-minded Kenyans. They added their confidence and commitment as well as US$150,000 apiece - and Honey Care Africa was born. The company's motto is "Honey from Africa: Honey for the World".
Honey Care Africa is one of the projects of the Kenya branch of the Global Environmental Facility's (GEF) Small Grants Programme (SPG). This is implemented by the United Nations' Development Programme (UNDP).
Farouk Jiwa is in South Africa to attend the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD). He has a stall set up at UNDP's Ubuntu Community Kraal at the Ubuntu Village, a few miles from the WSSD conference venue at Sandton.
AllAfrica's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton went along to meet Jiwa to find out more about his bee-keeping enterprise, its novel approach and the reaction of Kenya to new-look, new-tasting honey.
I am a Kenyan and I am the general manager of Honey Care Africa. It is a small company in Kenya that is promoting community-based bee keeping.
Precisely what does that mean?
What we try and do is make it accessible for small-scale farmers who live in communities and who now access beehives on a lone basis. We get people in collectives; individual ownership of hives exists, yes, because we are all capitalists at heart. But at the same time we try to make sure that we develop some sort of cooperative or some sort of association, where farmers can work together. All hives are provided either on a loan or cost-sharing basis.
We are also working to promote bee keeping with more than 400 independent self-help groups, development groups and community-based organisations all over the country. In addition, we have numerous bee keeping projects with various individuals, where the size of the apiaries range from 5 hives up to 800 hives.
When did you start and what set you along this course? Did you learn about this sustainable form of bee keeping in another country?
When I returned back home to Kenya after my university education in environmental biology at Queen's University in Canada, I decided to go back and see if there was any way that I could get involved in any sector of agriculture in any particular way. Bee keeping made the most sense, because it worked really well for the environment, had no negative impact and, at the same time, it worked quite nicely in developing incomes and generating money for communities as well.
Of course, there was bee keeping in Kenya before you got back home but how does the manner in which you are making honey differ from what was happening before?
I think first and foremost, probably the most important thing is that there has been a change in technology. We use the Langstroth beehive, which is a system of bee keeping that has been used in North America and Europe since the end of the First World War. It has never been used in Kenya and in East Africa in an organized way before.
How does the Langstroth method differ from conventional bee keeping?
It does two things. First and foremost you separate where the queen and the brood live from where the honey is produced. The second thing that you're doing is that you have recyclable honeycombs. So you are not cutting down the combs at the end of every season and you are not destroying the queen of the bees. So you have a continuous supply of honey throughout the year.
So tell us what normally happens? Are the queen bees and honeycombs destroyed?
Traditionally most communities in Kenya use log hives or basket hives, where you go in and smoke out the bees. You use a knife to cut out all the combs and put everything into a bucket. What you've basically done is you've damaged the beeswax, which is the most expensive thing, from an energy standpoint, for the bees to produce. At the same time you have destroyed the success of generations of bees that are being built in there as well.
Expensive in terms of time and effort for the bees?
Expensive in terms of time, I think, for the bees, and it just distracts them from producing honey because, until the combs have been built, you can't put any honey into the hives at all.
You say that in North America the Langstroth method has been going for more than fifty years. How come it hasn't traveled round the world and reached Kenya?
I think the first thing is that Kenya took the wrong turn in terms of bee keeping in the 1960s with the introduction of the Kenya Top Bar hive. It was at a time when people thought that appropriate technology was the best thing to do, never realizing that, at some stage, the best technology in the world was what people wanted.
The Top Bar hive unfortunately derailed the way bee keeping in Kenya was being developed. And nobody thought the structures were in place for the Langstroth hive to work.
Explain what the Kenyan method was, because I suppose in the 1960s people thought it was the best way.
It was considered to be appropriate for the level of development of the communities where you did not have to do a lot of training, where you did not have to go out and help the farmers extract the honey and they could go out and do it on their own. Unfortunately they produced very poor quality honey and it wasn't even marketable.
What do you mean by poor quality?
In terms of the moisture content of the honey, in terms of the smoke and in terms of the general appearance and taste of the honey. It was very smoky, very cloudy and the international market refused to accept that honey.
So who was eating the Kenyan honey?
It was primarily being used by local farmers and local communities.
And now?
Now we have 12,000 Langstroth hives across Kenya. We are producing large volumes of honey, approximately 65 metric tonnes this year. And we are able to supply almost all of that honey exclusively into the local market in Kenya. It is a high quality honey, an organic honey with unique natural flavours. We are supplying major retail outlets, hotels and industries in Kenya. It is available right across the country and we also have some surplus to start exporting now.
Have you begun exporting yet and if so, where to?
We have basically started exporting into Uganda and Tanzania. We started about a month and a half ago, but primarily the focus has been producing high quality honey for Kenyans first and foremost.
The funny thing about agricultural production in Africa is that Kenya, for example, produces the best coffee in the world and yet Kenyans drink the worst coffee. For a change we thought why don't we produce a high quality product which Kenyans know and Kenyans like: supply the local market first and then worry about the European market later.
How soon are you going to begin worrying about the overseas market rather than the east African regional market?
I think we have a lot of work to do in terms of first of all saturating the local market at every single level. The next thing we are trying to do is move away from glass jars into small little sachets, 15g sachets, like you get your tomato sauce when you go and buy chips in a sachet. We intend to have those available for 2 Kenyan shillings so that communities can now afford honey, before we think of the export market.
So now that you have consolidated your product in the local market and made sure that Kenyans are eating what you call good honey, how soon do you think you will begin marketing the idea of Kenyan honey outside your country in other parts of the continent? You have mentioned Tanzania and Uganda, but what about other African countries? Do you see such collaborations being a possibility?
Be the first to Write a Comment!
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
