MALAWI: Jesuit Unit Targets Sugarcane Farmers for Empowerment
Fr. Wildred Suman Head of the Social Enterprise Development Unit.
Luke Bisani
The Social Enterprise Development Unit (SEDU) under the Society of Jesus popularly known as Jesuits, has been set to empower local Sugarcane farmers in Malawi by producing sugarcane juice to add value to the sugar stick grown in the country.
Speaking at the launch of the Sugarcane Juice project on Saturday in Lilongwe, the Head of SEDU at the Jesuit Centre for Ecology and Development in Malawi, Fr. Wilfred Sumani said the project targets small-scale farmers who are growing sugarcane to help them generate more income from the gold stick sugar.
“It is impacting the farmers who are growing the sugarcane to add value to the sugarcane they grow in their fields, instead of just selling the raw sugarcane they will be selling the juice thereby generating more money from the sugarcane,” said Fr. Sumani who is also Director of Academics at the Catholic University of Malawi.
He added that the project will also create more opportunities for several stakeholders who are involved in producing the machines that execrate sugar juice from the cane.
“Looking at the way we struggle in the country with forex, I thought it would be good to have the machines locally available, so I involved Lilongwe Technical College where these machines are now being made using what we call reverse engineering,” added Fr Sumani.
“We will have people supplying these machines locally, people who are to repair and supply spare parts to these machines and the ones that are to be using these machines, and now a full industry will be born,” he added.
One of the sugarcane farmers in Machinjiri, Blantyre, Humphrey Chakaka, said farmers now opt to grow and sell the sugarcane at a retail price as a way of helping them generate more money, hence, expressing optimism that the sugarcane juicer machine will be a game changer in their lives.
“I hope this machine will help us quite a lot in getting more value to the sugarcane than before. These days, we shun selling the sugarcane to vendors, we go to the market ourselves to sale so that we can get more money,” said Chakaka.
Established as a unit under Jesuit Centre for Ecology and Development, SEDU complements the effort of running programs that provide farming communities in rural villages with the skills to protect their livelihoods from the effects of climate change in Malawi.
According to Fr Sumani, the Sugarcane Juice project is being realized with financial support from the Jesuit Missions in Germany.
