A farmer's organisation
Mali is Swahili for wealth, an appropriate name for a project aiming at providing an extra income for the most vulnerable from the remote Muleba district. A study about the Muleba district in 1997 showed that fruit was plentiful, particularly in the lowlands, the poorest area, but nothing much was done with it. That's how the idea was born to start up a farming association. Together we decided to set up a fruit juice enterprise to give all that fruit a higher market value. Fruit was bought directly from the small-scale farmers, giving them a new source of income. Hundreds of families were able to sell their fruit for an honest price and saw their income more than doubled. For quite some years now Muleba's fruit juice factory has been producing delicious, healthy fruit juice from freshly pressed pineapples, mandarins, mangoes, oranges and passion fruit. We consciously chose to sell the juice locally. After all, stimulating local development also means developing a local market. |