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KAITE: Zimbabwe's bridge to the world Featured
SEED Gold Winner
Year of participation:2009
Region:Africa
Subject:Biodiversity / Natural resource management|Food security
A small business, a research institution and an association of small-scale women farmers together are facing the challenge of improving rural livelihoods and reversing severe land degradation through innovative organic farming of essential oils, made from the indigenous Tarchonanthus camphoratus bush.
Original project description
Since 2007, KAITE trains small-scale farmers to produce, process and certify organic essential oils, herbs and spices. It is the first local enterprise in Zimbabwe to work with small-scale women farmers to produce these products for export. The 30 employees at KAITE connect the 500 cooperating partner farmers to local and international fair trade markets in order to target key markets in Europe and the US in the flavouring, fragrance, cosmetics and pharmaceutical industries.
Each KAITE partner farmer increases its family’s income by 150% while fulfilling international customers’ demands for organic products and derivatives. This provides a sustainable income base for farmer families, in addition to a marked improvement in food security.
Trainings organised by KAITE not only involve sharing of knowledge about production and processing skills but also about, nutrition, schooling and HIV/Aids prevention. The initiative thus contributes to better health and education levels of participating communities and particularly of households headed by women. This results in direct community involvement and empowerment.
Organic farming promotes sustainable, ecological and holistic approaches to land use. This leads to a marked improvement in soil fertility of partner farmers' plots; elimination of harmful agrochemicals and persistent organic pollutants; and reversal of land degradation in the wards practising conservation agriculture.
Current project updates
No update available.
Growth plans description
• Expand the cooperation to new parts of Zimbabwe
• By the end of 2010, increase the number of partner farmers from 500 to 2500.
• Purchase additional high quality mobile distillation equipment to enable an increase in the number of rural communities working in organic production in social and environmental programmes
Current Needs
• Advice in business planning and marketing
• Partners to access Carbon Market funds from voluntary mechanisms
• Financial contributions to assist with the up-scaling of the operations in Zimbabwe
• Investors/shareholders from private or institutional backgrounds
Project Gallery
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Project partners
• Fambizanai
• Kufunda and Silveira House
• Phytotrade Africa
• Trust Organic Small Farmers
• ZOPPA
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SEED support for this project
• Assisted with building / improving a business plan
• Assisted with creating an impact and growth strategy
• Assisted in self-assessment to evaluate the initiative’s status towards 8 critical success factors
• Designed marketing material
• Provided networking contacts
Founding partners
Founding Partners
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