Transcript
Sawa
The banana I'm holding in my hand is locally called bogoya, the size of a baby's feeding bottle, and enough to keep you going if you missed breakfast. It's just one of the different varieties of bananas in Uganda, generally known as matooke, a staple food crop for most Ugandans. But I've just realised that this banana is a wonderful raw material to which value can be added and lots of money made. So let me find out how. I am at the national headquarters of the Presidential Initiative on Banana Industrial Development, and I'm lucky to speak to the director, Dr Florence Muranga.
Muranga
Matooke has got so many players between the farm gate and the final user, so you find that you have a discrepancy in the price from as low as 300 Ugandan shillings in the remote areas of Sheni, to as much as 15,000 at the exit market in Kampala. So basically the farmer is growing for the middleman. So what we are trying to do in the value addition is to teach farmers to add value to their products, and we have building capacity for bulking up this product in silos so that the farmers can have an opportunity to bargain and say I want to sell today, or I don't want to sell.
Sawa
How do you help them do the processing?
Muranga
To start with we are going to teach the farmer to do the raw banana flour, and basically I want to tell you that we are not looking at using electricity, we are looking at a full cycle of agriculture whereby, when we peel the matooke, we get the peeling and we cause them to generate biogas which we use for the drying process. And then the concentrates go back to the farm, so that we have the organic cycle of banana production to be sustainable.
Sawa
Is this only a programme which can benefit only Ugandans or it can be elsewhere in the world, to see that farmers of matooke or bananas are benefiting?
Muranga
We want eventually to sell it to our stakeholders in the Great Lakes region, in Rwanda, Burundi and Congo where the matooke is grown, and maybe to a lesser extent also in Kenya and Tanzania.
Sawa
I am now heading straight to the outskirts of Kampala, to find out how one processor is unlocking this potential.
Mahewa
My names are Adeline Mahewa. Personally I'm from Homora Agroprocessors. You can do a lot with the tooke flour from soups, deserts, main course, whatever it takes.
Sawa
So what is the future of Uganda in terms of these tooke products?
Mahewa
I believe that the future is very bright. Many farmers have had the tooke ripen on their bunches and they have no where to sell it, but this is now a new innovation that has come their way. We the processors, if we go into this and begin making flour, which can make different items, they will be able to make money and reduce on the poverty that is alarming.
Sawa
With this talk of banana products I'm getting hungry. I think it's time to give this science and innovation a serious test.
Sawa
I am inside the Serena hotel where the contest of the best chefs is going on, where they are using banana flour to produce many different products.
Msogo
I'm called Msogo Henry, I'm from Kampala Serena hotel.
Sawa
What have you produced for us?
Msogo
Now today I've produced cream of tooke soup and it has quite a lot of items, given the fact that we have tooke flour as the main one, we also have milk, we have cream, we have vegetables.
Sawa
You've talked about the creams and the nutritious values and it has just aroused my appetite. Could we please just go down and we'll see the product itself.
Msogo
So the product I have here is ...let me give you a taste. You really have to taste and you'll feel it, it's really nice. Can you feel it? You may be forced to take more than two!
Sawa
It's really wonderful, and in fact the smell, it's like so spicy, so delicious, the taste is somewhere between sugary, salty...
Msogo
Exactly, what I can assure you is there is no sugar here. It is just the combination of all that is here, the tooke, salt is there, the spices, the pepper is what makes that.
Sawa
Well, with all these wonderful products, let me find out what people on the street say.
Sylla
I have just finished at the university. I started my own small business called Sylla's Oven. I am making cakes and other confectionaries from home.
Sylla
I use the ordinary ingredients, sugar, wheat flour, but fortunately enough, tooke flour has been introduced, and I am using raw tooke.
Sylla
I like the fact that it has its own flavour to it and then in addition, in combination with wheat flour, it traps in a lot of air, which is desired in baked products. So I find that quite good about the raw tooke flour.
Man 1
I am telling you farmers will benefit out of this. Let them take it, let them support it, we shall be having a lot of demand for this tooke flour.
Man 2
The new product is exciting, because it is the first of its kind. I've been to a number of countries. I've been to Belgium, I've been to France, I've been to UK where I've been studying, but I've not seen tooke flour. So I think Uganda as a country should be proud of this.
Sawa
Well, too much of talking about tooke products and all the banana products. I have been Pius Sawa and now I am just going back with my appetite, and maybe tomorrow I'll have to find some products in the market and start going matooke. End of track.
