Women’s empowerment is a major part of the Peace Corps agenda in Malawi. It is a part of every program, an umbrella covering over each project, much like HIV/AIDS. In Mwazisi one of my projects is to create a formal women’s group that will focus on entrepreneurship. There was a loosely formed group before, but it was not very active and practically the leader of the group was the only participant. The leader of the group, Mrs. Nyabota, is an amazing lady that accomplished so much on her own. Together we hope to reinvigorate the group and start over. Our first business will be pressing oil from groundnuts.
Groundnut oil pressing can be fickle. Many people were unable to turn a profit while simultaneously competing with big store brands like Kazinga (Unilever) and Kukoma. So we ran a brief feasibility test. The problem, we discovered, was with the groundnuts. Local groundnuts are quite dry and produce very little oil, thus rendering the enterprise a waste of time. However, we tested the press with CG-7 groundnuts, which were issued by the government, and they produce a lot of oil, enough to make the product profitable.
The big manufacturers, with economies of scale, produce it so cheaply that it still eats our profit significantly. But I devised a solution to our problem (though we’ll have to see how well it works in practice). When the nuts are processed into oil the output is oil and a remainder of crushed groundnuts. This leftover material was considered waste, usually fed to livestock. It’s still very nutritious and tastes like raw groundnuts. I took the crushed groundnuts, roasted them in a pan with a little of their oil, and spooned in an equal proportion of brown sugar with a dash of water. Once the mixture melts, I poured it into a plate to cool, then cut it into squares. This is a simple Indian sweet my grandmother used to make, but with more of a peanut bar twist. We took the pieces and did a market test selling them at Mk. 5 a piece. The community loved them. Very little sugar was used and the waste material added a second revenue stream to the oil press. We generated a profit of about Mk. 90 on the remainder of 1 kg of pressed CG-7 groundnuts.
A third revenue stream that we are still testing is fire briquettes. When we buy the groundnuts they are shelled and we run them through a manual sheller to remove them. We collect the waste shells and keep them in a bucket. These are great materials for fires/fire starters. The shells are basically combined with some cassava flour and pressed into little square blocks. These blocks, once dried, can be sold to people in the community to use in their cooking fires. While we still need to see the actual profitability of this product, if it works, it would boost our total revenue. Also, by using the shells we basically made full use of the whole groundnut, wasting nothing.
The last test we ran was on quantity sold. We could not compete on price with 250 ml and greater against the big brands (maybe someday in the future, but not starting out). Currently, the only way people have cooking oil is that the local shops buy from supermarkets in the boma, put it on a matola, transport it to the village, and sell it. The oil supermarket price has then a transport cost and shop profit tacked on. But if we make the oil locally in the village and sold it in 25 ml sachets, starting out, we would profit. Each sachet would only be Mk. 20. These sachets, if enough are made, can be taken by bicycle to surrounding villages, reaching all the way from Kampenda to Bembe. The press itself cost Mk. 18,000 and at breakeven that’s about 90L of oil (if considering only the oil profit), it will be up to the group whether they want to undertake this business.
If this business doesn’t meet expectations, or succeeds enough to expand to other businesses, we want the group to begin exploring new ventures. Ideas in the works are the production of juice, jam, fruit drying, soap making, and pending some operational issues, baking. I hope the women’s group is successful and sustainable. The women I have met in Mwazisi are amazing, truly super women, work more than anyone I have ever seen. They are keen to start their own businesses and generate their own income. The only problem is they need the business tools (bookkeeping, business plans, etc.) and some reassurance that their businesses will succeed. After all, they are sacrificing the little time they have, which could be spent farming or the million other things they do everyday.
Mrs. Nyabota is the best example of an active successful woman in the community. Long before Peace Corps showed up in Mwazisi, since she was a young girl, she was running her own businesses from here to Bolero. She was producing dry fruit, jam in Bolero, a bakery in Mwazisi (that she built out of an oil drum, fuelled by wood fire), an egg farm, a tailoring shop, and a grocery shop. All this while also maintaining and caring for her household. She is a sharp business lady and Mwazisi is lucky to have her here.
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