In honour of the International Day of Rural Women, we thought there was no better time to shine a spotlight on the work of some terrific female FAC agripreneurs who were past finalists at our Global Agripreneurs Summit.

Baobab Products Mozambique (BPM) was set up by Eco-Micaia, a social enterprise established in 2008 in Mozambique by Andrew Kingman (UK) and Milagre Nuvunga (Mozambique). It is directly linked with Micaia Foundation (NGO). While Andrew leads the company and its work on natural products, Milagre leads the Foundation in its work helping people escape poverty and build sustainable livelihoods.

Almost all of the people from whom BPM buys baobab are women. The women live in one of the driest parts of Manica Province where agriculture is difficult and life is hard. Baobab is a critical resource and a rare source of income.

These amazing women are leading the change in their communities, using income from Baobab to school their children, launch other small businesses, and invest in their homes. The women also receive support from Micaia, our partner in development.

Micaia Foundation’s project work incorporates most of the areas in which BPM buys baobab. This means that the company is able to facilitate opportunities for its harvesters to get access to training, learning and practical support.

Current projects include: helping communities in the baobab areas undertake forest inventories and develop management plans for the natural resources that exist in the community providing a facilitated informal learning programme to help the women develop ideas for how they can invest (eg in other small businesses) the money they earn from baobab sales. 

BPM is a shareholding company and Eco-Micaia set aside 20% of the shares for the women Baobab harvesters. BPM, with help from their partner Micaia, is working to enable the harvesters to play an active role in the planning and running of the company, and ultimately share in its success.

Alongside the exports of organically certified baobab products for the world market, BPM is determined to create a suite of finished products for local and southern African markets.

Always striving for quality and distinctiveness, BPM’s goal is to show that African companies can compete with the best international brands in the world.

What a great success story and we congratulate all of the team involved at BPM – keep up the terrific work and lead the way for other rural women to become agripreneurs!