Towards the end of the month of May, Chomora and I went to the African fair in Sakuragicho, Yokohama. This fair took place along with the fourth Tokyo International Conference on African Develeopment (TICAD IV), which was attended by President Bingu wa Mutharika and 39 other African heads of state.
Most African countries had their stands at this fair but we could not manage to visit them because we got stuck on the Malawi stand, where we met Mr Robert Salama from Malawi Export Promotion Council (MEPC), Mr Mbinga from Mulli Brothers, Mrs Kaima Kaluma-Sulumba, the National Coordinator of the One Village One Product (OVOP) in Malawi and some officials from the Malawian Embassy here in Japan.
Apart from chatting with these esteemed Malawians, we also saw a large number of Japanese people getting interested in Malawi’s products. The products that were being exhibited on the Malawi stand included coffee, tea, sugar, peanut butter, traditional wear, baskets, handicrafts, groundnuts, baobab jam, nali hot sauce, macadamia nuts etc. Take a look at some photos from the Malawi stand:
The team manning the Malawi stand was overwhelmed by the interest shown by the Japanese people. The Dailytimes reports that Mr Salama from MEPC said
There are huge interests in green coffee. There is a big Japanese company which is interested in our green coffee, they import the coffee from Kenya Uganda and Ethiopia and now they want the Malawi coffee.They have seen our samples, they are interested and now they have asked for a quotation for a full container for a start.
This is a good development for our country. As a blogger based here in Japan, I am very impressed. My advice to fellow Malawians is that we must seize these opportunities vigorously and make sure that the country gains a lot out of this fair. There is a very good impression here about Malawi.My only concern is that some companies in Malawi did not put their contact details (phone number, fax, email) in the Fair guide book.This will make it difficult for people interested in their products to contact them. Let me also point out that it is high time that Malawian companies maintained their own websites. It is not expensive to maintain a website today. The benefits of having a company website are enormous. With time, you will notice that what you gain by having a company website outweighs the costs of doing so by far.I am maintaining one here quite easily. If you need a company website, I can help you to get started. Finally, let me congratulate One Village One Product (OVOP-Malawi) and Mulli Brothers for maintaining their own websites. A few other companies submitted URLs that cannot be retrieved. Please refrain from submitting dead URLs because that will iritate your potential customers.
20/06/2008:Update
The Daily Times further reports that apart from green tea and other commodities, Malawi has clinched deals to export honey to Japan. In an interview, on the sidelines of the ongoing sessions, the Minister of Trade and Industry Henry Mussa is reported to have said
We have indeed found potential market for Malawi’s produce.Clearly, we have clinched deals in tea, coffee, groundnuts and soya beans just to mention a few. In addition, firm offers were placed on Malawi’s honey, apart from tea and coffee.
Malawi’s honey in Japan!This is a great development!When I saw Mzuzu coffee being exhibited at the fair, I got so excited. I immediately recalled that when I was growing up, my grandfather, Mr Owen Wilton Nthambazale Nyirenda, used to be a great coffee farmer up there in Usowoya.His biggest coffee farm was at Kawenyanga. He, however, abandoned it and switched to tobacco because coffee was no longer lucrative. But of late, it seems coffee is becoming lucrative again. The Mzuzu Smallholder Coffee Authority is doing a good job and it seems the returns to the farmer are better than they were when my grandfather abandoned his farm.
The demand for Malawi’s honey in Japan is exciting me even more. In rural Malawi, most people practise honey farming for domestic consumption.When they produce more honey than their needs, the excess honey just gets wasted. As I was growing up in Malawi, Lungazi, a mountainous area close to Mzokoto and Phwezi, was home to a large number of highly committed honey farmers whose excess honey was just being wasted. With the openning of the Japan market, the government must reach out to the Lungazi farmers and their colleagues in other parts of the country so that they can benefit from this development. These farmers have to be equiped with some basic skills on commercial bee keeping and honey harvesting techniques. Some Smallholder Honey Authorities have to be formed. These have to be modelled based on the existing Smallholder Coffee and Tea Authorities.
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12 users commented in " Malawi’s stand at the African fair in Yokohama "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackHi Clement
In the late eighties and nineties I’ve been on quite a few fairs all over the world.
Was pretty exhausting, nevertheless there came definite good fruits of these doings.
I think you are giving great advice. I would also like to hint at the point, that with fairs it is important to keep exhibiting, for at least two or more years, thus giving confidence to potential customers and not being an one time thing.
Hope that you are well in Tokyo and that things are going fine with you.
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You sure look like you had it all well organized my friend. Pretty impressive if I may say. I wish you all the best and more
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I’m glad to see the interest in green coffee. I’m sitting here enjoying a cup of Ethiopia Sidamo coffee from Starbucks right now. It has a kind of chocolate-like taste to it. I’d love to try the Malawi coffee, I’ll bet it tastes great too. Best wishes to you in your efforts. Hopefully Starbucks will try your coffee. They buy a lot of fair trade coffee.
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This is very impressive!
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This has really caught my fancy, but is anyone listening out there….. Right now there is a huge market for farm produce as most countries have vowed not to import from Zimbabwe until things get better….. This is our opportunity to cease and impress so to better our economy…. We have Malawian representatives who can help us establish contact points as long as we show interest…. Anyone up for it?!!! It doesn’t have to be the farmer himself, be the middleman and do something…anything!!
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Hi Clement,
The Malawi stand looks fantastic! There is also quite a surge in demand for green coffee here in the UK. You should look to export some here too
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@Mark: I also look forward to seeing Starbucks importing Mzuzu Coffee so that you can have a taste of this product from Malawi.
@Mika: From the stats of this blog, I can confirm that many people are listening.If you know some Malawians that side who can work as representatives, please send their contacts to me .I will relay them to Mr Salama who works for Malawi Export Promotion Commission (MEPC) for his action.
@Fair Trade Products:If you know some specific companies that are interested in Malawi’s coffee, please send me their contacts. I will immediately relay them to the Malawi’s Trade authorities.
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I can’t wait to try some of this malawi coffee.. any idea if its any closer to being in starbuck?
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[...] Until the ownership of PanAfricanism is citizen-oriented through the concrete establishment of common economic values, shared social identities, a consensual political front and a more authoritative African Union Commission, pan Africanism shall continue to stay at the level of futile state-centric theses and reactionary anti-theses and the result shall be the ubiquitous power jockey among a rent seeking political elite, the scramble for depleted resources among the emasculated masses and the stereotype image of a continent that has erroneously earned the stigma of "a scar on the conscience of humanity". Clement Nyirenda’s blog world [...]
Great article. We always buy African coffee but I didn’t know about this one from Malawi. It is also possible to buy Fairtrade cotton from African now. Power to Africa!
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Clement Nyirenda says:
January 16th, 2009 at 7:29 pm
@Fairtrade cotton: You can get more details about Mzuzu coffee and honey here.
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I just stumbled across your post while searching for free trade information – I am impressed by the types of worldwide interactions going on between countries interested in the fair trade market. I agree with you about the websites – it would make interactions so much easier if more developing countries made their websites more easily accessible. I have been trying for several weeks to gain contacts in such areas but it is very difficult to find what I am looking for, namely contacts in regions where fair trade is developing. last week I was thinking that I’ll just have to get on a plane and go there myself! that seems like the only way to contact people!
.-= Venk´s last blog ..Storytelling and tea time =-.
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