farm news
Corporations make a killing milking Africa
Published
11 months agoon

A Ugandan cattle herder with indigenous Ankole Long-horned cattle searches for pasture, in an area where local lands were grabbed by a foreign company for a plantation.
In recent years, farmers and even pastoralists have been pushed to adopt “high-yielding” breeds of cows, often crosses between the cows used on industrial dairy farms in Europe and local breeds. These new breeds are offered to women, particularly widows and single mothers in the rural areas of the countries where organisations like Send A Cow and Heifer International operate. By their nature, these foreign breeds are costly and come with onerous instructions for care, health and reproduction, for which the farmers have to take on debt to purchase costly veterinary products, shelters and artificial insemination.
When dairy imports are curtailed, smallholder dairies in Africa will step into the void and meet the local demand, as they have wherever such measures are put in place. They can do so without adopting Europe’s industrial dairy farming practices and breeds of livestock. In fact, Africa’s local livestock systems and breeds of animals are highly efficient in securing milk and livelihoods for local communities and much more adapted to the context of climate change than the industrial models.
Company
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Countries
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Private equity/corporations involved
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Notes
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Société Africaine des Produits Laitiers et Dérivés (SAPLED)
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Côte d’Ivoire
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Duet Private Equity
|
In 2015, the UK-based private equity group Duet acquired SAPLED from the Sifaoui Group. In 2019, workers at the company’s factory in Abidjan went on strike over two months of unpaid wages. Thirteen months later, in February 2021, they were back on strike, this time over four months of unpaid wages. The General Director blamed the company’s debts for the unpaid wages.
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MB Plc
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Ethiopia
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Cerberus Capital Management
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In 2016, Singapore-based SGI Frontier Capital, which was backed by the UK’s CDC Group, acquired a 45% stake in MB Plc, makers of the Family Milk brand in Ethiopia. In 2018, CSGI Frontier Capital was acquired by Cerberus Capital Management of the US.
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Fan Milk
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Ghana, Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire, Togo, and Burkina Faso
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Danone, Abraaj Group
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In 2013, the private equity fund Abraaj Group and Danone acquired Ghana-based Fan Milk, “the leading manufacturer and distributor of frozen dairy products and juices in West Africa”. In 2019, Danone acquired Abraaj’s stake, giving it 100% control of the company. In February 2021, Fan Milk announced an agreement with Nigeria’s Ogun State to build a large-scale dairy farm.
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Countryside Dairy
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Kenya
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DobEquity, Acumen (FMO, Proparco, etc)
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In 2016, the Dutch private equity firm DobEquity purchased a stake in newly established dairy processor Countryside Dairy. In 2021, it received further investment from the Acumen Resilient Agriculture Fund, a fund managed by New York-based private equity firm Acumen and backed by the Dutch development bank FMO and the French development bank Proparco, along with the Soros Economic Development Fund.
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Brookside Dairy
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Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda
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Danone, Abraaj Group
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Kenya-based Brookside is the largest dairy processor in East Africa, buying milk daily from 200,000 farmers and operating in 12 countries. It was founded and remains majority owned by the family of the Kenya’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta. Brookside’s expansion has been aided by foreign investment, first from Abraaj Group of Dubai, which held a 10% stake via a fund partly owned by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation before its collapse in 2018, and then the French dairy giant Danone, which now holds a 40% stake.
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L&Z
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Nigeria
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Sahel Capital
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In 2015, the Fund for Agricultural Finance in Nigeria acquired a 25% stake in the Nigerian dairy processor L&Z Integrated Farms. The Kano State dairy company was founded by Muhammadu Damakka. The Fund for Agricultural Finance in Nigeria is managed by Nigerian private equity firm Sahel Capital and is backed by Nigeria’s sovereign wealth fund and the development banks of Germany (DEG), the Netherlands (FMO) and the UK (CDC). In June 2021, Sahel disclosed that it was in the midst of an exit from the company.
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Sosaco Nigeria
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Nigeria
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GBfoods Africa Holdco (jointly owned by GB Foods of Spain and Helios)
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Sosaco was a subsidiary of the Honk Kong trading company Watanmal, whose main products are tomato paste imported from China and sold under the Gino brand and Jago processed milk. In 2017, GB Foods of Spain and the private equity fund Helios Investors III acquired Watanmal’s African operations, alongside a USD15.5 million investment from the World Bank’s IFC.
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Ndoto Farms
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Tanzania
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AgDevCo
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In 2013, Ndoto Farms, a dairy farm in Iringa with a herd of around 350 cattle, received a USD 90,000 investment from the AgDevCo, a UK private equity fund that mainly invests on behalf of the UK’s DFID.
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Tanga Fresh
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Tanzania
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DobEquity
|
Tanga Fresh operates Tanzania’s largest dairy processing plant in the Tanga region, where the government and foreign donors have been promoting the development of dairy farming. The company received an initial investment from the Dutch private equity firm DOB Equity in 2007 and a further, undisclosed investment in 2020.
|
Pearl Dairies
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Uganda
|
MIDCOM, TPG Capital
|
MIDCOM is a Dubai-based company run by Indian businessman Anand Kapoor, with backing from established Indian-Ugandan businessman Bhasker Kotecha, who is the owner of Midland. Pearl received an investment from the World Bank’s IFC of USD 8 million in 2013 towards the construction of the powdered milk plant in Mbarara District. TPG’s Rise Fund now owns 34% of the company, with Kapoor and Kotecha retaining 33% each. While TPG claimed it would help take Pearl international, targeting Algeria, Ethiopia, Malawi and South Sudan, in March 2021, Pearl Dairies shuttered its milk processing plant in Mbarara and announced it was shifting to honey production for export to Europe.
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Lakeside Dairies
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Uganda, Kenya
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Dodla Dairies, TPG Capital
|
Lakeside is a subsidiary of the Indian dairy company Dodla Dairy, which entered Uganda through a purchase of Hillside Dairy and Agriculture Ltd in 2014-5. Dodla also has a milk trading company in Kenya called Dodla Dairy Kenya. Dodla is 25% owned by TPG’s Rise Fund, and 5% by the World Bank’s IFC.
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Dendairy
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Zimbabwe
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Dendairy is 27% owned by the Norwegian private equity company Spear Capital, which lists Norfund and the Government of the Netherlands among its investors. It was granted lands by the government in the Chiredzi area, where about 12,500 people of the Chilonga Community live and are set to be evicted. The communities have been fighting to stop the eviction.
|
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Original Source: grain.org
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farm news
Falling coffee prices, reduced output forecasts rattle Uganda farmers
Published
2 weeks agoon
January 17, 2023
There has been a slump in international coffee prices and shipping costs in the last quarter of 2022
Uganda’s coffee industry is walking into a challenging 2023 defined by falling prices and diminished output forecasts following the recent dry spell that hit major growing areas.
While the sector enjoyed a boom between 2020 and 2022 – with surging coffee prices, rising export volumes and considerable incomes for farmers – decline in international shipping costs and improved production forecasts in Brazil triggered a slump in coffee prices in the last quarter of 2022, according to industry players.
International shipping costs dropped from record highs of $10,000 per container charged on certain sea routes in January 2022 to less than $2,000. Shipping fees charged per 20-foot container ferried from Indonesia to North America, for example, are estimated at $800-$1,000 currently.
Consequently, local and international coffee prices have dropped since October 2022.
International robusta coffee prices fell from an average price of $2,400 per tonne to $1,856 per tonne towards the end of last year, according to industry data. Local robusta coffee prices declined from Ush7,200 ($1.9) per kilogramme to Ush5,800 ($1.6) per kilogramme during the second half of 2022 while Arabica coffee prices fell from Ush11,000 ($2.9) per kilogramme to Ush8,000 ($2) per kilogramme in the period.
In 2021, average coffee prices stood at more than Ush15,000 ($4) per kilogramme.
Dry spell
Robusta coffee production accounts for more than 60 percent of Uganda’s overall coffee output.
Besides gloomy coffee price forecasts for 2023, a severe dry spell in the past six months could pose a huge threat to coffee production levels. The weather affected major coffee-growing areas like the Central region and risks cutting this year’s output to around 5.5 million bags, industry players forecast.
“Brazil and Vietnam are headed for a bumper coffee harvest this year while India and Indonesia have discounted their local coffee prices in a way that has undercut Uganda’s growth momentum on the international market,” said Robert Byaruhanga, chief executive of local exporter Funzo Coffee Ltd.
Post-Covid shift
Asian and Latin American coffee exporters are regaining dominance in European and North American markets after the lockdown period because of the lower coffee prices, reduced freight charges, shorter port clearance turnaround times and reasonable coffee quality grades, Byaruhanga explained.
Ugandan farmers are now holding onto their coffee produce in anticipation of better prices.
Overall coffee exports stood at 6.26 million bags valued at $862.28 million in 2021/22 compared to 6.08 million bags worth $559.16 million registered in 2020/21, data from the Uganda Coffee Development Authority shows.
An estimated 447,162. 60 kilogramme bags of coffee valued at $64.1 million were exported in November 2022 at an average price of $2.39 per kilogramme — 6 US cents lower than the average price of $2.45 per kilogramme posted in October 2022.
Original Source: Daily Monitor

At least 43 goats have died of Peste des Petits Ruminants (PPR) disease, also known as ‘goat plague’ and several others are undergoing treatment in Madi-Okollo district.
Madi-Okollo district veterinary officer, Dr Charles Onzima, says the viral disease, which is related to rinderpest in sheep as well as goats, has claimed the lives of goats in Olali parish in Ogoko sub-county.
He adds that PPR disease was confirmed in the district after 500 local and 94 Boer goats were supplied to families in Olali parish under a poverty eradication programme that he suspects infected the local goats.
43 of the boar goats died while 10 of the local goats of the communities also died of PPR disease.
Onzima says immediately after receiving information about the disease, the veterinary officers got the goats manifesting the signs of PPR that include sudden onset of depression, fever, discharge from the eyes and nose, sores in the mouth, breathing difficulty and death among others.
He says that they have already had three rounds of vaccination for the available goats in the affected area.
Original Source: New Vision Via harvestmoney.co.ug
farm news
Artisanal gold miners defy government on mercury use
Published
1 month agoon
January 2, 2023
In October, President Museveni signed into the law the Mining and Minerals Act 2022. One of the key provisions in the law is the banning of mercury use in mining activities.
Artisanal and small scale gold miners in Uganda use mercury to separate gold from the ores, a method they say is cost effective, fast and easy to use. During this process, mercury is mixed with gold containing materials to form a mercury gold amalgam which is then heated to obtain the gold from the sediments.
The miners do the processing without wearing any personal protective gear. However, different Non- Government and Civil Society Organizations have over the years warned these miners against using mercury as it poses serious health threats to human life and dangerous to the environment.
But even with the government banning the use of mercury and several warning about the dangers it imposes, gold miners are not yet ready to stop using the substance especially since the government is not providing any viable alternative method they can use.
In Tiira mining site, Tiira town council, Busia district, gold miners expressed their concerns on this ban. Stephen Engidhoh, the Eastern Uganda chairman of Uganda Association of Artisanal and Small Scale Mining (UGAASM) said that mining has created jobs for over 30,000 people in Busia alone and with the government ban on use of mercury, many of them are likely to remain jobless.
He noted that in every sub county in Busia district, there are people during the exploration of minerals but the large gold discoveries here should not be an excuse to eliminate the small-scale miners from the mining sector because these minerals belong to all of them and it where they make a living from.
He added that if government wants this directive to be implemented, it should enforce it gradually and after finding an alternative method the miners can use.
“Government should first sensitize the miners about the dangers of using mercury before eliminating it. By government coming to abruptly ban the use of mercury, it is already creating indirect employment for smugglers to smuggle it into the country than they think they are eliminating,” Engidoh said.
Paul Angesu, the chairman on Tiira Landlords and Artisanal Miners Association said that even though they have been told that mercury is dangerous, for all the years they have used, they have never seen anyone experiencing the danger they say it causes.
“The government still needs to carry out thorough investigations on the possible dangers of using mercury so that it presents to the local miners with practical evidence that indeed mercury is dangerous and this will make us to easily stop using it,” Angesu said.
He added that sometime back, the Uganda National Association of Community and Occupational Health (UNACOH) came and took samples of mercury from the miners but they were not able to submit in the feedback for them to know if indeed they are indeed being affected by mercury.
An alternative gold extraction method which has been suggested to the artisanal gold miners is the use of borax method’ a technique of artisanal gold mining which use borax (a chemical compound) as a flux to purify gold. However, the miners say the government has not taken the initiative of introducing this method to them and training them on how to use it.
“They want us to use borax as an alternative to mercury but most of us don’t even know how borax looks like or even how it works. How do they expect us to start using something they have never taken the initiative to introduce to us?” Angesu asked.
Ramadhan Birenge, a gold miner in Namayingo district has tried using borax before after an NGO brought a sample of it to them. He however said that there is no any another way a miner can use to get gold clearly and quickly other than using mercury.
“The borax they are telling us to use is very expensive and not easily accessible to us, we don’t even know where it is sold and to get gold through using borax is a very long process yet mercury is a very easy, shorter process and relatively cheap.”
John Bosco Bukya, the chairman of Uganda Artisanal Miners Association told The Observer that they are law abiding citizens and since they have tested the consequences of operating in irregularities, they have no big problem with banning of mercury use in mining areas.
But however, before government bans it, it should provide the miners with an alternative processing reagent. He noted that government may not succeed with the ban and not because the miners don’t want to stop using mercury, but because the available alternatives must be effective, efficient and affordable.
“We don’t know anything about the borax method which they say can be an alternative. We don’t know where it is manufactured from, neither its cost or effectiveness. Government should first train the miners of an alternative method, test its effectiveness and efficiency before banning the method currently being used. If it is more efficient, definitely miners will stop using mercury,” Bukya said.
He also advised government to first sensitize these miners about the dangers of mercury before enforcing it and then phase it out gradually and not immediately because it is going to affect the livelihoods of Ugandans who are in this sector and yet it is the responsibility of government to make sure that all Ugandans thrive in their businesses.
Mercury is smuggled into Uganda through the porous borders with Kenya by cartels which makes its trade illegal. It is then discreetly sold to artisanal miners in Busia with a Kg costing between Shs 600,000 to Shs 1 million.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), exposure to mercury, even small amounts may have toxic effects on the nervous, digestive and immune systems and on lungs, kidneys, skin and eyes as well as pose a threat to the development of the child in the womb for pregnant women.
Most of these ailments manifest over time. People who burn the gold usually take in large doses of mercury because they directly inhale the metals but those who may get it after eating food or drinking water that is contaminated with mercury take it in slowly and it accumulates over time.
Mercury also contaminates the soil making it infertile and unable to support agriculture, water and air. Mercury emitted to the air can also circulate around and contaminate water, fish and wildlife far from the mine from which it was released which affects the biodiversity.
Original Source: The Observer
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