PRESIDENT Yoweri Museveni has advised African countries to take advantage of the $3b world honey market trade.
Addressing participants at the launch of Honey Trade Africa (ApiTrade) at a conference at Hotel Africana in Kampala last week, the President said regional honey trade was in line with regional integration. “We need to come together and support these regional groups to flourish. Africa produces rich honey for export but this goes unrecognised all over the world. ApiTrade will recognise our honey,” he said.
“This shows that the spirit of Pan-Africanism is working. It is a positive course to define our destiny for Prosperity-for-All, which the Government is promoting.”
Museveni expressed concern that only a few people were involved in income-generating activities.
“The majority are in the villages growing food for their own consumption,” he said. “If you have only food to feed yourself, how will you get out of poverty?” he asked.
The President said the Prosperity-for-All programme was aimed at ensuring food security and increasing household income.
“People in rural areas have fragmented their land. You find a household remaining with less than four acres. And if they do not choose high income-yielding projects on this small piece of land, they will never get out of poverty.”
He urged farmers to diversify agriculture.
“We advise people to be selective on the projects they undertake. The best would be to diversify in high yielding fruits, coffee and bananas.”
Museveni said bee-keeping was a profitable venture. “It does not need big acreage of land. You can put bee hives at the edges of the farmland,” he said.
“If every homestead had 20 Kenyan Top Bars (KTB) and was extracting 20kgs per season and per hive three times a year, it would earn a good fortune. This would be in addition to bee wax and propolis. Each homestead would earn over sh7m per year.”
He encouraged farmers to make money from honey.
“I was surprised to hear that the Chinese export a lot of honey to the EU and at the same time in other industries. They should leave honey to us and concentrate to other complicated industries.”
The President also presented awards to the best three exhibitors. They are Beza Mar, an agro-industry from Ethiopia, which was the best ApiTrade exhibitor 2008, Kitgum Women Bee-keepers Association and Golden Bees Limited.
The world demand for honey is estimated at 1.48m metric tonnes and Africa contributes only one percent.
