Aduna creates a market for baobab fruit
- By: Jackie Wills | The Guardian
- May 1, 2015
- 2 min read
The lives of Vogue readers are probably incomprehensible to women in the impoverished villages of northern Ghana. But they have been connected by the baobab tree and its fruit.
Bringing them together are Andrew Hunt and Nick Salter, the founders of Aduna, a company that has publicised baobab fruit as a superfood, guaranteeing interest from the worlds of fashion and beauty.
Women have traditionally been responsible for baobab trees but its crop has never been a staple in Ghana, so it’s been undervalued. That is changing. For this tree crops during the dry season when it’s impossible to grow anything else. The baobab doesn’t need fertiliser or irrigation, and the fruits dry naturally on the branch. Now the women can harvest the baobab and make money from it.
Aduna was set up to provide an alternative to aid in rural Africa. It sells baobab fruit powder and energy bars as well as a powder made from the moringa tree – another superfood.
Hunt and Salter believe the aid-to-Africa model has failed and the continent is littered with the remains of donor-funded agri-projects that weren’t commercial.
They are putting their experience with multinational companies behind indigenous natural products and wild-harvested tree crops. They intend to create demand for them and link smallholders to a huge global market.
The company is working in northern Ghana, where it estimates it could provide an income for up to 8,000 communities.
When Aduna started out in 2011, 95% of people in the UK had never heard of baobab fruit. This beautiful tree grows in 32 countries and Aduna estimates it could provide income for up to 10m rural households. National Geographic estimated a global market for baobab could be worth a billion dollars to Africa.
Aduna has been creating demand by marketing and educating consumers, finding producers and working with them to harvest, process and export their products.
Aduna is now a best-selling brand, written about in newspapers and magazines including Vogue. The range is sold in Holland & Barrett and Ocado, and in at least nine countries.
The company is working in partnership with government and community organisations in Ghana to create a supply chain. Twelve communities – 1,200 women and families – are buying the raw materials, processing them and selling them to Aduna.
Another 4,400 people in Senegal and Ethiopia are benefiting as part of the supply chain. The processing centre is in the drought-affected upper east region of Ghana, where 90% of the population live in extreme poverty and many are malnourished.
Among the challenges Aduna faced was the fast pace of its own growth, making sure the fruit was good quality and creating a supply chain in an area without transport and where women were poorly educated.
Baobab fruit is one of the most nutrient-dense foods. Its seeds contain vitamin C, thiamin, potassium, calcium and vitamin B6. During the rainy season the tree absorbs water, storing it in its trunk, which allows it to produce fruit in the dry season.
Source: Theguardian.com
By: Jackie Wills
