Zimbabwe entrepreneur giving wasted bananas new appeal

DW (English)

Small-scale banana farmers in Zimbabwe throw out up to a third of their banana harvests because they can't be sold. This week's Doing Your Bit! features one young entrepreneur who is trying to give these bananas new appeal.

Transcript

00:00 (upbeat music)

00:02 Bananas are a key crop for many farmers here

00:09 in Zimbabwe's Manikaland province.

00:13 But bananas can be tricky.

00:15 They don't store well.

00:17 They suffer during transportation

00:19 and sometimes they simply remain unsold.

00:22 That's why around a third of the harvest

00:25 frequently ends up as waste.

00:28 Bright Nzomba has two hectares of banana plants.

00:32 He found the high losses frustrating.

00:34 - Companies, they will take first grade, B grade,

00:39 and the farmers will remain with the C grade and the rejects.

00:43 So with that ongoing process,

00:46 I realized that we are losing a lot of bananas.

00:49 So we started to mitigate,

00:51 finding ways to mitigate those losses

00:53 and how best we can do that.

00:55 That's when an idea of processing bananas came.

00:59 - After all, the unsold bananas

01:02 are still a valuable source of nutrition,

01:04 even when they're in a different form.

01:06 The agronomist founded a company, Nezox Brands.

01:12 It now processes the unsellable bananas

01:15 from more than 40 local small-scale farms.

01:18 The bananas are cut into small pieces

01:20 and the slices are then put into

01:21 solar-powered drying cabinets until they're fully dried.

01:25 The production process is climate-friendly.

01:30 That's important for Bright Nzomba

01:32 because he and his neighbors are already feeling

01:34 the effects of climate change.

01:37 The region is getting hotter and drier

01:40 and that's impacting harvests.

01:42 A proportion of the bananas are ground into flour,

01:46 then packaged and sold.

01:50 The company also makes fruit snacks

01:52 from dried banana skins.

01:54 Thanks to Bright Nzomba, local farmers

02:00 can now earn money on their whole yield,

02:02 whether their bananas are perfect or not.

02:05 (scraping)

Category

Transcript

Recommended