Earn sh45,000 from roasted nuts

To make groundnuts butter, soak the nuts for at least six hours in order to soften them, then drain them.

Thereafter, dry them, then roast them until they are crunchy. This can take at least one hour. Grind them when still warm, using a grinder or local grinding mortar - these are many on the market.

As you grind, the butter begins to create on the sides. In most localities, what comes out of the mortar is commonly called ebinyebwa ebipooli and this can be eaten on bread or cooked into sauce. The more you grind, the more the oil comes out of the nuts.

The butter can be stored under cool temperatures for at least three months even without any other additives. A kilogramme costs as much as sh12,000.

Roasted groundnuts

By roasting groundnuts, a farmer increases earnings by 70%.

In most supermarkets, half a kilogramme of roasted groundnuts costs between sh5,000 and sh6,000.

Roasting groundnuts is simple. All you need is a saucepan that can hold 2kg-3kg at a go, a big charcoal stove and a mingling stick. The saucepan costs about sh50,000, while the energy-saving charcoal stove goes for about sh25,000.

A kilogramme of groundnuts will cost you sh4,500 from shops. However, the same will give you over sh45,000 when you sell it.

While many people use basic equipment to roast the groundnuts, large-scale roasters can use electric-powered roasters to ease their work. These can be acquired from stores that sell food processing equipment around town.

Groundnuts sauce/paste

This is also common, too. To prepare the nuts for the sauce, they are either roasted first before they are pounded or simply pounded raw. Those that are roasted first have got a better aroma than those that are pounded before roasting them.

Some people use a motorised machine to pound the nuts. The machine costs sh1.5m and more, depending on the capacity.

These can be bought from Katwe. It has the capacity to pound at least 100kg per day. While you buy a kilogramme of raw groundnuts at sh4,500, you will sell each kilogramme of pounded nuts at sh7,000, after processing it.

Groundnuts sauce can be cooked in different ways, including with onions and salt, mixed with fish or beef or with vegetables or dried fresh.

Compiled by Joshua Kato (editor, Harvest Money)