Dear customer

Celebrating International Women's Day

Baobab Fruit Powder is the African superfood ingredient that tastes great and has an outstanding nutritional profile. As Africa's leading Baobab operation we work with over 5.000 registered local harvesters, 80% of whom are women and the number is growing every year. We buy the fruit in rural areas, organize transport, extract the fruit powder and engage in international trade. Sustainable livelihoods, community development, gender empowerment, and ethical working conditions are at the heart of our operations, and we are committed to improving the situation of people in the poorer regions of Zimbabwe and South Africa. Every season we register more and more harvesters, help them form local cooperatives, pay for organic assessments and certification for their collection areas, run regular training workshops, provide them with equipment, and pay every harvester a fair trade price. The extra income allows them to pay for school fees, additional food or household items.

Today is International Women's Day. It is a global day highlighting the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women around the world. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity. To celebrate this important day we profile one of the 4,000 female harvesters without whom our Baobab collection and processing operation would not be possible.

Profile of Baobab Harvester: Sekai Shati

Sekai Shati is a mother of five children, all of whom still live at home with her and her husband in the village of Chibuwe in the rural Chimanimani area of south-eastern Zimbabwe. Locally she is known is “Mai Talkmore” (literally “Mother of Talkmore”, her eldest child). Her family come from a very dry part of Zimbabwe in the heavily degraded Savé (pronounced “Sar-vay”) River valley. Two of her children are still at school, the other three have finished their education. None of her family are in any type of formal employment.

She and her husband both run the family smallholding on which they grow some vegetables, mainly millet and tomatoes. Most of what they grow, they eat themselves. If they do have any surplus they will try and sell it at the local village market. Unfortunately because most of their neighbours also grow the exact same crops, there is little demand and prices are very low.

Sekai has been supplying our operation as a Baobab harvester since 2013. She has access to five different Baobab trees, from which she is able to harvest up to half a tonne of fruit per year. During the harvesting season, which lasts for up to five months a year, she goes out once every two or three days on a collecting trip around all of her trees. She usually does this in the company of her neighbour and close friend Mechia. Together they find all the fruit that have fallen beneath each tree, inspect each one for ripeness and damage, discarding the unripe and broken fruit and keeping the ripe ones. Sekai also helps Mechia collect the fruit from Mechia’s trees, sharing the burden of each other's harvests together.

About once a month, our area manager for this region comes round to buy the fruit from her. He brings his truck, weighs the fruit and pays her on the spot for what she has supplied. This is her family’s single largest source of cash income during the year. Because she is solely responsible for collecting the fruit, she makes the final decision on how to spend the money. Her priorities are school fees, uniforms and stationery for those of her children still at school, and a few groceries for the whole family.

Celebrating the Harvest

Here Sekai and her fellow female Baobab harvesters give thanks to another successful Baobab harvest through traditional song and dance.

A quick note about our Newsletters
 

If you are new to our newsletters, our mission is to educate the food and beverage industry about Baobab. Every few weeks we release an article focused on a different attribute of Baobab to help expand your knowledge. Our past newsletters have generated a lot of interest and feedback. Just in case you missed any of them, here they are again:

1. Introductory Guide to Baobab
2. Functional Uses and Applications of Baobab in Food & Beverages
3. Baobab and Immune Protection in relation to COVID 19
4. Baobab, Responsible Sourcing and Social Impacts
5. Baobab Product Development Guide
6. Baobab as a Glycemic Response Moderator
7. Traditional Food and Medicinal Uses of Baobab in Africa

About Baobab Exports

Baobab Exports Ltd is the sales and marketing arm of EcoProducts B’Ayoba, the world's leading Baobab operation. A partnership between two leading Baobab Fruit producers, EcoProducts B’Ayoba is Africa's only FairWild, Organic and FSSC 22000 Version 4.1 certified Baobab operation. We have impeccable social-impact credentials, providing a much-needed supplemental income to over 5,000 registered rural African harvesters and their families. Our supply chains are fully traceable and sustainable, with environmental and training programs in place to protect the Baobab tree populations. As a result, we are a member of the Union for Ethical Biotrade. We are also founders of the African Baobab Alliance, a non-profit organisation dedicated to growing the positive social and environmental impact of the Baobab industry. Our processing facility in South Africa has been audited under the FDA’s Foreign Suppler Verification Program (FSVP), a key requirement for all importers to the US.

Global Reach

• For US, Canadian & Latin American customers, we deliver from our Long Beach (California) warehouse. 
• For European and Middle Eastern customers, we deliver from our Bodegraven (Netherlands) warehouse.
• For Asian and Australasian customers, we ship directly from South Africa.

Kind regards