The benefits of Gambia’s famous sunshine are no longer reaped only by the tourism industry, due to a successful marriage between local food producers, hotels and restaurants that’s serving to reduce imports and boost local livelihoods.
This challenging marriage of a horticultural company with a strong track record of commercial success together with an NGO with strong local experience, has proved rewarding.
Combine the words agriculture and tourism and the vision is one of farms with fields full of crops or flowers – a variation on the ever popular garden tours. Not so in The Gambia, one of the least developed countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, where 60 per cent of the people live below the poverty line, and three quarters of the population are engaged in agriculture.
Sure, there is farm experience tourism in Gambia – now – but it grew out of Gambia is Good! (GiG), a practical project which has made a major impact on turning around a situation whereby most of the value of Gambia's well-established winter sun tourism was being absorbed by tour operators, airlines and hotels with no flow on to the local food producers.
Begun as a collaboration between Haygrove (a UK fruit and flower grower), the charity Concern Universal and local Gambian NGOs, research was conducted into the Gambian fresh produce market. The work identified a high value tourist hotel and restaurant market with a desire to buy high quality Gambian-grown produce.
However, previously unreliable supply, inconsistent quality and shortages during peak periods meant that key products – potatoes, carrots and onions which could be grown locally – were instead being imported, from Senegal and Europe. Additionally, the many excellent horticulturalists working in poor village communities could only sell produce through 'middlemen' who took a disproportionate margin share.
In 2002, encouraged by a vision to harness commercial skills in a developmental project, Haygrove approached BLCF to partner in the establishment of a Gambian fair trade-integrated horticultural production and marketing company – GiG or Gambia is Good! The aim was to provide tangible economic and social benefits to poor rural Gambian communities.
The projected benefits – which are now flowing – included developing sustainable rural livelihoods for farmers and community groups, inspiring entrepreneurship, and reducing the environmental and social cost of imported produce by establishing best practice horticulture.
The project had three main phases so that there was a clear focus on activities and deliverables for each part: testing the concept by supplying a limited number of customers for one year; launching the business by supplying at least 25 businesses in Banjul; and launching wholesale and export operations.
The strong linkage relationship formed between Haygrove, (a UK commercial grower supplying major UK supermarkets) and local, currently subsistence growers in The Gambia resulted in exchanges of ideas in areas such as irrigation, post harvest grading, distribution, marketing and cultural practices.
On-site training now enables farmers to grow year round and, by distributing appropriate inputs and sharing new technologies, new markets have been created for potatoes, which had not previously been produced by local gardeners, and onions with full season production and over winter storage for sale throughout the year.
The grading system improved product quality and selling prices and modified drip micro-irrigation systems, which not only improved yields but also drastically reduced the time women spent watering – traditionally women spent 66 per cent of their garden time collecting well water.
Setting up stores at Kerewan – and later Latikunda – gave producers access to good varieties of quality seeds for an extended growing period as well as previously unavailable organic and chemical pesticides and fertilizers.
GiG has also established both a pricing information system to keep farmers up to date with real market fluctuations and prices, together with a mechanism for sale and distribution to hotels (2007:16), restaurants (2007: 18), supermarkets (2007: 4), catering companies (2007: 3), wholesale dealers and retail sales by stall owners. The very first delivery was made to just one hotel on 23 February 2004 – potatoes, carrots, cabbages, cucumbers, eggplants, onions and hot peppers, all sorted and graded.
Initially GiG worked with 30 growers, increasing in the second year to 270 and 400 by 2007 with 90 per cent of them women. The broader impact extends to some 4000 people. As GiG continues to expand – already there are 10 full-time and five part-time GiG jobs – up to 2,000 growers could become suppliers.
GiG plans to increase sales and value by introducing produce kiosks in Kololi and Senegambia, which operate as vegetable depots for the local restaurants, as well as organic vegetable boxes for the expatriate community and top-class restaurants.
This challenging marriage of a horticultural company with a strong track record of commercial success together with an NGO with strong local experience, has proved rewarding: GiG has been able to reach greater numbers of farmers more quickly and the project links into donor-funded efforts such as Smallholder Irrigation for Livelihood.
GiG's success was recognised by the Travel Foundation in 2006, which provided funding to establish a GiG demonstration garden at Yundum to act as a training centre (built using simple, low cost local materials), showing best practice in irrigation, soil preparation, composting and how to grow both high margin exotics and out of season items.
The garden is now in full production and is pioneering items including broccoli, iceberg lettuce, strawberries, herbs and cauliflower, all marketed through GiG. The garden is its own financial entity, should be self-sustaining by the end of 2007 and, in the tourism development area, is building three vegetable retail kiosks, which will also provide information on the project.
For more information contact BLCF fund manager, the Emerging Markets Group at this address