11 minute read
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 (below).
Tanzanians 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
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 Tanzanian agriculture”. He made his name with Ninayo, the online trading platform for Tanzanian maize farmers, which attracted the investment of Garett Camp, the co-founder of Uber, and was later acquired by the global transport company’s incubator Expa Labs.
Healthy plants and lots of them
Jack’s latest East African project is Maua Mazuri. As its chief executive he oversees a state-of-the-art lab and nursery in the fertile Kilimanjaro region with a team of scientists and expert farmers set on producing premium quality and disease-resilient plantlets and seedlings to take African agriculture to the next level.
The company name translates from Swahili as ‘beautiful flowers’ and was inspired by the popular Tanzanian lullaby “Maua Mazuri yapendeza”. While floriculture products won’t be part of operations until late next year, the Moshi nursery has been producing superior planting materials for fruits and vegetables such as mango, papaya, tomato, pineapple and cassava since 2009. However, in the past two years, with the arrival of Maua Mazuri’s tissue culture laboratory, the focus has been on bananas. Here in the stateof-the-art lab scientists can isolate a healthy banana plant seedling and create the ideal conditions for it to multiply identically.
Tissue culture explained
Jack explains the process as akin to creating “photocopies” of good plant genetics. He says: “Tissue culture is a non-GMO method for multiplying healthy seedlings. In practice, we isolate the corm [plant stem] of a healthy banana plant seedling, near the root. We place that seedling in a nutrient-rich agar, under exact pressure, light and temperature conditions. The seedling multiplies each month, with that exact genetic identity.
“The seedling has a monthly multiplication rate. So, for example, if we multiply two seedlings with a multiplication rate of three, we will have six seedlings after one month. But because the growth is compounding, we get tens of thousands of seedlings in later generations.”
The banana plantlets remain in the lab for around six months and then half that time again at Maua Mazuri’s Mbosho nursery semi-hardening in the greenhouse and getting used to natural living conditions.
They are then available to Tanzanian farmers, who should see transformational results. These bananas are resistant to diseases that have plagued production of the crop across the globe and harvest faster and with far greater yields. Maua Mazuri advertises its services with the tagline ‘make your acre your money maker’ and Jack says: “Poor genetics plague most farms. Our tissue culture specifically addresses the genetics of planting material, but it also helps farmers fetch higher market prices, as the bananas harvest uniformly, making it easier for buyers to manage their logistics. The return on investment per acre, over 30 months is good, roughly four times the return on investment. You’ll be hard pressed to find anything like that in the stock market.
“There are hundreds of farmers who have purchased our seedlings across Tanzania and Kenya. Our seedlings are yielding harvests with 95 per cent accuracy, which beats the industry standard.”
Creating a quality product that farmers can trust is paramount at Maua Mazuri. Tissue culture is not new to Africa, but Jack says there has been a history of unscrupulous supply that has exploited the continent’s agricultural industry.
“Part of the reason it is so important to have a trusted tissue culture company is that after generation ten, the genetic quality of the seedling starts to decline,” he tells me. “There’s a big business of selling seedling genetics from generation 10 onwards to far flung places like Africa, because there will be no consequences for the seedling distributor.
Maintaining standards
“Maua Mazuri cuts off our multiplication before generation 10 and we use PCR testing to assess the viral index in our seedlings. We pride ourselves on supporting our farmers through harvest, so that they come back again and again. As our customers are doing.”
Maua Mazuri has the facilities and the expert staff to comply to such exacting standards. Jack has assembled a “passionate and capable” 84-strong team across the lab, farm and nurseries.
The lab is entirely staffed by women, led by Chantal Ndabigendgesere, who has spent over ten years running tissue culture labs in her native Burundi. Jack tells me the female dominance is deliberate and addresses an issue he became aware of on his introduction to Tanzania over a decade ago.
“I came here as a Peace Corps volunteer and lived in a rural Ruvuma village teaching math from 2009 to 2011,” he says. “During that time, I became obsessed with the agriculture sector, but I also saw so many brilliant young women excel in math and science as well, but in the end there just wasn’t much opportunity for women with that background in Tanzania. Having a female-run lab at Maua Mazuri feels like it’s completing something.”
Sharing best farming tips
For all the expertise of his team, Jack is keen for people to understand that Maua Mazuri does not produce “magic seedlings” and that any farmer expecting simply to plant them and sit back and wait on their bumper harvest is going to be disappointed. These are organic living creatures that require water and nutrients. The onus is on the farmer to maintain them and space them in a way that maximises production on their land.
Fortunately, Maua Mazuri’s duty of care extends far beyond the moment they hand over the nursery-hardened plantlets to the farmers.
Jack says: “Tanzanian farmers can visit our demo farm and see the most effective banana farming techniques. We also invite our customers to our ‘Bwana Ndizi’ [‘Mr Banana’] WhatsApp group so that they have 24/7 access to our banana agronomist. Customers can share pictures of their progress and ask questions. Farming is dynamic, so it’s important they know how to address common problems like [leaf spot disease of banana plants] sigatoka, and our team is ready to answer the simple and complex questions that arise.”
Maua Mazuri is also helping its customers cover the costs of its seedlings and confidently invest in their farms through Cycle Out of Poverty (Coop), set up in partnership with NMB Bank. The initiative’s package of benefits includes a sales contract for the banana harvest, financing from NMB, Maua Mazuri seedlings and agricultural training and advice.
Jack says: “I’m really proud of the Coop initiative as I’ve basically built my career around helping smallholder farmers earn more money, and this works wonders, and without any aid or charity. It’s the private sector partnering with farmers so that they can profitably manage their land.”
Revolutionary change
The stage is set for a revolutionary change in banana production in East Africa which allows smallholder farmers to level up. Jack hopes Tanzania will see a similar growth in its banana export industry as it has recently experienced with its avocados. He also feels it is time that the vast majority of the population engaged in agriculture here see financial rewards for their efforts.
He says: “Tanzania is in such a unique position in terms of agricultural development. It’s a beautiful thing that 80 per cent of the work force is in agriculture, working close to nature. But it’s also tragic that smallholder farming traps families in a cycle of poverty.”
Jack is buoyed by the willingness of larger industrial-scaled farms to come onboard Maua Mazuri’s mission to help uplift smallholder farmers. He recounts the example of an “amazing” farm and packhouse in Morogoro, which is owned by Tanzanian politician Abdullah Mwinyi. It produces highly prized golden yellow, sweet cavendish bananas for markets in the Middle East and Eastern Europe.
“Those bananas are going to be export grade, and for quality reasons, the smallholder farmers surrounding him just won’t be at the same level and be able to access that market,” Jack says.
“But the Honourable Minister Mwinyi is committed to using the packhouse, refrigerators and other equipment to help farmers near him optimise their harvests for the domestic market. He’s even looking into being a distributor for the seedling and leveraging the economy of scale in a way that will seriously raise the standard of living for neighbouring farmers in Morogoro.
“I think we’ll see more of that. Innovative models that are practical, profitable and lift up everyone.”
Maua Mazuri is also looking to spread its influence across Tanzania’s agricultural heartlands with a training scheme in place for nurseries across the country to learn about and distribute the lab-raised banana seedlings.
Jack says: “Getting our products available in all corners of this country is a goal we are rapidly approaching. Big banana producing regions like Mbeya and Bukoba have so much potential for tissue culture banana seedling distribution and farming.”
Tanzanians may have a love affair with the banana, but now it seems it is time for the head to rule the heart, get serious about the fruit and reap its life-changing financial rewards. As Jack says: “Our clients aren’t farming because they love bananas, necessarily – it’s an investment. They are entrusting Maua Mazuri seedlings to grow and bear the fruits that will send their kids to school and provide for them happy and abundant livelihoods. I take that investment very seriously.”
For more information on the Maua Mazuri seedlings and services, visit maua.mazuri.co.tz
Benefits of the banana
Inexpensive, healthy and convenient – thanks a bunch, bananas!
• Rich in nutrients
• May improve blood sugar levels
• Helps digestion
• Low in calories, yet filling
• Potassium rich so good for you heart and blood pressure
• Full of antioxidants
• Contains electrolytes so helps in recovery from exercise
• Easy to eat
