Fruit Producers in Mozambique Benefit from Training and Technical Assistance

The small town of Dondo in central Mozambique is home to 120,000 people. Bananas, pineapples, mangoes, coconuts and papayas all grow in abundance during a few months of the year, but due to a short shelf life they are unavailable out of season. The majority of farmers sell their fruit at local informal markets where competition is fierce and sale prices are often lower than production costs. About 38% of Dondo’s inhabitants were refugees during the civil war that ended in 1992, and many were deprived of formal schooling. A lack of literacy and numeracy skills, combined with the country’s legacy of state-controlled farms that were established during the 1970s and 1980s, have led to many farmers being unable to respond to emerging market opportunities.

Representatives of the Dondo Community Center – a vocational skills development center with a membership of 75 women – approached ACDI/VOCA in 1997 requesting assistance with fruit processing activities. The women had previously experimented with fruit jellies, but with the high cost of fuel, sugar and packaging materials, were unable to operate at a profit. That same year, volunteer Garth Thorburn from Florida visited the center as part of an economic viability study, and recommended fruit drying as a more cost-efficient alternative.

ACDI/VOCA staff provided training in proposal writing and budget preparation, which led to modest start-up grants from local and international organizations. The ACDI/VOCA office also produced a fruit-drying manual with the assistance of volunteer Margaret Palen from Oregon. The manual included instructions for the construction of a range of dehydration units of increasing sophistication, in addition to fruit pre-treatments, packaging options and how to calculate the costs of production.

Volunteers Deanna DeLong, also from Oregon, and Earl Lynch from Georgia helped the center to construct a mechanized dryer using locally available materials, and this was followed by an assignment later that year carried out by Terrill Christensen from Idaho. Mr. Christensen provided hands-on demonstrations of such techniques as glazing and candying, and showed the women how to vacuum pack the finished product. Marketing techniques and promotional activities were also discussed.

The Dondo Community Center representatives displayed their products at the Beira Trade Fair in November 2000, organized by ACDI/VOCA together with the Mozambique Chamber of Commerce. As a direct result, the center was awarded a contract to supply bulk quantities of dried fruit to a local export firm.

“The fruit drying project is yet another example of how committed volunteers working with follow up support from the local office can transform a group of resource-poor people into a profitable business,” said the program’s director, Nicky Benn. “A number of organizations have recognized the success of ACDI/VOCA’s technical assistance, and are using our training materials to develop fruit drying as a money making venture in other parts of rural Mozambique.”