Our Mission

"Everything is permissable – but not everything is beneficial. Everything is permissable – but not everything is constructive. Nobody should seek his
own good but the good of others."

Our mission

I came to Uganda in 2005, wanting to see for myself first-hand the problems of development and poverty in Africa, and what I could do to help remedy these problems. I have emerged having set up a business employing local Ugandan people and working with rural farmers, empowering them to escape poverty as well as develop both an economically and environmentally sustainable industry.

We aim to eradicate poverty in rural communities through beekeeping. Toward this we focus our energies on working with rural farmers in training and encouraging them to build long-term trade relationships. Beekeeping being the only positive environmental agriculture, creation of wealth in production and health with nutrition of the product.

 

See our capacity building activities in our Photo gallery

The virtues of Malaika beekeeping

Economic

The costs of investing in beekeeping are minmal not needing alot of land as they roam freely and feed themselves. Aside form the initial outlay of beehives and beekeeping equipment swarms can be attracted to the hive by appropriate baiting and maintenance involves weekly attention only.

Nutrition

Honey is highly nutritious energy food. High in natural sugars, fructose, glucose and sucrose that provide long lasting energy. 80% natural sugar is mostly fructose and glucose.

The vitamins present in honey are B6, thiamin, niacin, riboflavin, pantothenic acid and certain amino acids. The minerals found in honey include calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, sodium and zinc.

Secondary beehive product Propolis is a resin produced by bees to disinfect the beehive. Having many compounds naturally occuring it proves to have broad spectrum usage on the human body. Read more...

Positive agriculture

Intergrated farming with beekeeping provides a rich nectar source for bees. Increasing crop yields through pollination creating eco-friendly income generation. 70% of all agricultural food stocks are pollinated by bees.

The use of intergrated farming also creates economic stability for the smallholder farmer that if one crop may fail another may be relied upon for household income.

Motivating farmers

Using our current beekeeping operations as a base we are expanding out in the community through supply of equipment and modern beekeeping education and training. This project is proving to be successful in motivating poor farmers, many of which have been involved in beekeeping at a subsistence level for many years, to work in co-operation with each other to suceed in creating a large scale quality exportable product. With our CSR support farmers can benefit from being a part of the Malaika Honey value chain.

Reliable market

Local farmers are ensured a ready market at set prices as opposed to fending for themselves often taking one jerrycan at a time to town. Many farmers complain they are getting ripped off. Middlemen often intervene promising money later that never appears or buy at a low price off the farmers and sell to us at a high price. This is important to overcome in order to stimulate production with just finance. Malaika guarantees payment on sale and a reliable market at set prices with growing demand.

(Hoima farmers requested this picture as middlemen had always been paying alot lethan market price.)

See Cost-benefit analysis

Beehive Improvement

The majority of beekeepers in Uganda use traditional hives as they can obtain them cheaply. In our training we encourage the use of the Kenyan Top Bar hive (KTB). It is also low cost and easy to use but most importantly has a highly and better quality yield.

Modern Langstroth hives are also used with greater commercial emphasis for the farmer in applied beekeeping.


Types of beehives and honey produced per season

Promoting fair values

We promote gender equality and provide training, education and assistance to women as well as men as beekeeping is not gender specific. Beekeeping can give women economic freedom and encourages them to participate more in the workforce.