Kudzai Rosemary Makaza
Artisanal Foods is a food processing business with special focus on the value addition of healthy fruits into foods that have more functional uses and more wholesome to consume. We currently value add green bananas to produce green banana flour and baobab fruit to produce baobab fruit drinks. Our target market is the health concious, lactating and pregnant women, and people suffering with non communicable diseases such as high blood pressure and diabetes, as a good diet with the right nutrient balance is known to be beneficial for overall health and wellbeing and strengthens the body’s reponse to illnesess. We work with baobab wild harvesters helping to increase their annual income from $50usd a year to about $300usd a year by providing a ready market for them. For banana flour, we work with small holder banana farmers so they can also benefit from economies of scale by supplying us as a unit. In order to create employment opportunities, we employ a significant number of youth and women and for those that we cannot directly employ, we give our products to on credit so that they can sell in their communities and earn a commision.