GOLDMINE: The aloe vera coverage in Uganda is 380 hectares

By Kiganda Ssonko

UGANDAN aloe-vera farmers have reason to smile again. This follows a new investment in the crop’s processing machine, whose products will have a stable foreign market.

Ali Sessanga, the project director of Uganda Commercial Aloe Vera Framers Association, says they will soon start exporting the crop to Japan and Korea.

The association is partnering with Southern Fields International in the US to promote aloe vera growing.

Sessanga says they got a sh1.08b loan from a foreign lender and a local NGO to buy the machine that processes the multi-medicinal plant into various health products. There has not been such a machine in Uganda. With the machine, the crop will be bought in big quantities from the farmers.

“The machine, which will arrive in March, can process aloe vera into cosmetic products, tooth paste and health drinks. Aloe vera flowers will be used to make herbal tea, while its residues will be turned into animal feeds. We advise farmers to start growing the crop massively,” Sessanga said recently.

From a medical perspective, aloe vera has nutritional and medicinal properties that could work as antibiotics, astringents, pain inhibitor and growth stimulators, whose function is to heal an injured surface.

He said the machine can process 60 hectares of the crop a month.

The aloe vera coverage in Uganda is 380 hectares. A hectare accommodates 4,000 aloe vera plants. Each plant produces 5kg, and a kilogramme costs sh300.

In Uganda, aloe vera is grown by about 130,000 farmers in 26 districts, but its concentration is in Kibaale, Wakiso, Mukono, Masaka, Kiboga and Luweero districts.
Sessanga said the association was registering farmers, who would undertake a contract farming programme, where they would sign agreements stipulating the prices and terms of supply.

“We have started buying the crop from farmers in Kamuli, Kaliro, Kiboga, Rakai, Masindi and Kibaale districts.”