Honeycare started in 2000, so about 16 years ago, mainly focused as an NGO, trying to help
scale up beekeeping activities across the canyon.
There was success during that time because it was Kenya's first honey company, really
trying to work with small scale farmers to get them to produce honey.
So that's really paved the way to show that with a market-based approach to encourage
people to produce something that can be bought at a fair market price to benefit both rural
farmers with higher incomes and also to benefit consumers getting access to good quality produce.
And this is something that we can take once it's developed and really be able to replicate
in a lot of other countries around Africa to create healthy, affordable, successful
and obviously tasty products.
Two billion people suffer from iron poisoning deficiencies around the world, seven million
people.
The children die on the age of five annually in direct consequences of malnutrition.
What are the issues or challenges with aggregating consumers at the base of the pyramid and staying
I guess adaptive to their changes in cash flow as a consumer?
We decided instead of doing ten shillings, which is ten cents, with two crackers, we're
also going to do five shillings for one single cracker.
So that basically allows us to capture the whole of the peer-to-peer market.
So this is the whole of South Sydney.
This is Drewbott.
When most people were running away, I think we exported about 30 metric tons of honey.
We did an assessment here in early 2014 just after we first came in and we'd increased
income from some of the community members by over a thousand.
With the challenges that took place in late 2013, I'd actually left three days before
the conflict broke out and ended up going back in mid-January to continue operations
in 2014.
That led us to drive around through a lot of the greater equatorial region to identify
farmers, to get them to take beekeeping and honey production seriously, and we provided
that guaranteed market for them, which led to our first export, which was the first legal
export of honey in the history of South Sudan, and that happened in April 2014.
So this is $1.50.
This is actually really, really good.
Good job, guys.
Very tasty.
This is the most premium.
Basically, select harvest means that it's not a mix.
It's from one specific area, and in this case, it's from Borengo.
How do you see the potential of results-based financing or development impact bonds playing
into how honeycares' operations can continue to expand?
So we do need additional funding to help expand, both in Kenya, in East Africa, in South Sudan,
and hopefully across Africa.
So getting access to like-minded financing organizations that would like to finance but
have that based on certain social results I think is a win-win for both parties.
So we can get or potentially partner with those organizations to get access to financing
to help small-scale farmers to increase their production levels, which we can then buy and
provide that guaranteed market for, and also ensure that there is that environmental aspect
to ensure that people are able to undertake an income-turing activity that doesn't harm
the environment.
