BEVAC Project Manager, Steve Paul (centre) expresses some points during the just- ended World Bee Day held in Dodoma capital City.
By Valentine Oforo, Dodoma
THE Beekeeping Value Chain Support (BEVAC) project is implementing two major projects worth around €1.2 million for the improvement of the country’s apiculture sector.
BEVAC is being implemented by Enabel, the Belgian Development Agency through funds from European Union (EU), and it operates under the coordination of the Ministry of Tourism and Natural Resources for Tanzania Mainland and Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation, Natural Resources and Livestock in Zanzibar.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with this publication, BEVAC Project Manager, Steve Paul unveiled the two projects in question as construction of a modern dormitory for sheltering women students at the Tabora-based Beekeeping Training Institute (BTI), to gobble up to €1 million upon completion, as well as installation of modern facilities at the Njiro International Wildlife Laboratory in Arusha region, at a cost of €200,000.
He added that BEVAC was currently working to execute an array of positive initiatives to further heighten the performance of the economic sector in the country.
“The vision behind the project for construction of dormitory at the TBI is to increase enrollment of women students at the state-owned bee training facility,”
“We want to ensure that there are potential, strong and qualified women who will in the near future play a major role as beekeeping extensional officers, beekeepers, as well as engaging into diverse beekeeping service provision,” the manager expressed.
Talking on the other project, for the installation of modern apparatuses at the Njiro International Wildlife lab, Paul detailed that they have already ordered the said facilities from outside the country.
“Currently, honey testing and sampling are being conducted outside the country due to the absence of needed laboratory facilities in Tanzania, which is time consuming and expensive,” he informed.
With the project, he observed that the vision is to equip the lab with the cloud – connected facilities to enable it to deliver all necessary honey, and honey related sampling and testing within the country.
“We will go far, to the tune of sponsoring the workers at the facility to attend special training to acquire necessary skills and knowledge on how professional to use the modern apparatuses to be installed,” he expounded.
Basing on the project’s rolling out roadmap, the BEVAC chief said the initiative was running its key apiculture activities into three main facets.
The first area, according to him, is to capacitate the institutions involved in the beekeeping sector to improve their performance, through diverse training as well as distribution of modern facilities.
“The project’s second working area is majoring to empower the bee farmers through imparting them with key apiculture knowledge and skills, ” he said.
And he added, under the category, BEVAC also works to roll out modern beekeeping implements to the farmers, the vision being to assist them adopting modern facilities and technologies that are necessary in improving their honey production and productivity.
To help attain this goal, he said the project has procured modern beekeeping facilities in order to open special demo-apiaries, to be used as a potential podium to train the bee farmers.
” Through this intervention, the project has already identified a total of 10,000 bee farmers across all areas with apiculture activities, and out of the number, we have so far managed to reach out to, and assist at least 3000 farmers,” the manager unveiled, saying they are continue working to reach out to the remaining number.
He said the project’s future vision is to make effective use of business coaches to help impart the bee farmers with useful business skills.
“We want the bee farmers to run their projects more professionally to the tune of realising needed profits,” he added.
As Part to cement the concerted efforts, the project also works to empower the district’s beekeeping officers (DBOs) in terms of giving them key working tools , including motorcycles for fast- tracking their services towards the bee farmers.
Together with that, Paul communicated that BEVAC was also engaging effectively to search and expand markets for locally produced honey, as well as its relevant value added products.
He informed, the project was sponsoring some bee honey entrepreneurs to visit overseas countries with vast honey markets.
“Today, we’re very happy to inform the public that the project has managed to enable at least three local entrepreneurs to get vast markets to export honey abroad,” he unveiled.
To facilitate the expanded international market, the BEVAC manager said they are currently working to organise and empower the bee farmers to produce as per the needed quality and volume of the netted profitable markets.
Tanzania stands 14th country for beekeeping in the world and 2nd in Africa with most of the country’s produced honey and beeswax often exported to Germany, France, Belgium and Netherlands, Oman, USA, Japan, Botswana, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, Congo DRC, Somali and neighboring Kenya.
Moreover, relevant records depict that the country is currently producing over 138,000tons of honey and 9,200tons of beeswax per year.
Tanzania holds at least 48.1million hectares of forests, equivalent to 54 percent of the county’s area, whereby the government reserved forests area is 465 hectares, including 24 tree plantations,23 natural environmental conservation areas, and 20 beekeeping reserves.
