Maua Mazuri
A new culture of growth for
THE BANANA INDUSTRY
Maua Mazuri is turning bananas into big business in East Africa. From its state-of-the-art lab in Moshi the Tanzanian company is using tissue culture to provide small-scale farmers with disease-free, exportquality banana plants as well as financing and farming plans to take their production to the next level. Mark Edwards talks to its chief executive, Jack Langworthy (left).
T
anzanians are bananas about bananas. The nutritional powerhouse, packed with energy-giving carbohydrate and heart-healthy potassium, is a staple of diets here and you’ll even find the plant’s leaves used as cattle feed, to provide roofing for homes or as a platter to serve food on. Jack Langworthy, an American who has spent most of the past decade living and working in the country, has become well aware of the high regard the fruit is held in here. “When my wife Sarah, who is Tanzanian, gave birth to our daughter, our family and friends nourished her with mtori, a plantain [cooking banana] soup, for weeks on end,” he says. “It was what Sarah’s mama had
eaten and her mama before that. The nutrition, energy and flavour in a Tanzanian banana are world class.” With his work focusing on business development in East Africa, Jack was also struck by the fact that the huge domestic demand for bananas was mostly met by smallholder farms across the country, yet Tanzania had little in the way of an export market. “Tanzania is a [global] top-ten producer in terms of national tonnage, however, we consume 99 per cent of what we produce,” he tells me. “Latin American countries like Guatemala or Colombia, with a similar production of about four million metric tonnes, have multi-billion dollar export industries. Tanzania consumes that same amount domestically.”
Producing bananas here in even greater numbers and of exportgrade quality has been hindered in the past by poor plant genetics and the spread of pests and diseases. Inefficiencies in farming practice for a crop Jack reports is often treated as “a hobby” rather than a business have also hampered yields.
A boost for banana farmers Preparing the tissue cultures in the Maua Mazuri laboratory
Now Jack is part of move to commercialise the industry and help smallholder banana farmers go from subsistence to life-changing income. This is what he does. The Californian admits “farming is not in my blood. I like economics, tech and data sets very much, though, and I’ve applied those interests into airtanzania.co.tz / 33
