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Local News: African venture earns accolades
Farouk Jiwa jokes being
“one to watch” isn’t necessarily
a good thing when you’re
a 31-year-old bald, goateed
man from East Africa.
But the York University
graduate’s business brilliance
in running East
Africa’s largest honey production
firm — and raising
the income of 9,000 small
Kenyan farm households by
half — recently earned the
2005 One-to-Watch award
from his fellow alumni.
“People, the planet and
profits do not have to be mutually
exclusive,” says the
landed immigrant, a Nairobi
native who returned to
Canada last year as an agricultural
business specialist,
after previous stints here as
a student.
“It is possible,” he says, “to
run a business that generates
social, economic and environmental
values that sustain
development in the developing
world.”
Jiwa’s Honey Care Africa
could silence critics who
think business and thirdworld
development can’t go
hand in hand.
Launched in 2000 with a
$50,000 loan from Danida,
the Danish government’s International
Development
Agency, Jiwa’s social enterprise
manufactures wooden
beehives and distributes
them to small farmers.
The beekeepers sell their
honey back to Jiwa at a fairtrade
price governed by the
International Fair Trade Association,
which monitors
labour exploitation. Farmers
keep the full profit after paying
off the $70 cost to lend
the beehives.
Participating households
normally earn about $1 a
day, and can bring in an
extra $180 to $250 a year.
Last year, the firm produced
350 tonnes of honey
with total sales of $750,000.
Jiwa’s project has garnered
six international
awards. TORSTAR NEWS SERVICE
Posted on Thursday, January 05 @ 00:00:00 UTC by jcohen
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