FAO helps Somalis to cash in on livestock waste
29/11/2012
Suweisra Mohamed waves a thick dry
camel bone with an assuring smile. "This is now worth lots of
dollars," she says, brandishing the dense and neatly cut camel thighbone.
At 47, Suweisra, an unrelenting Somali woman, has finally discovered what she
describes as a hidden treasure in piles of Somaliland's waste. In fact, piles
of decomposing animal remains litter the environs of every slaughterhouse
across the Horn of Africa country.
"Until now, we used to throw
away these bones, which were useless to us," she said. "But now I
know that we have for many years been throwing away money, a lot of it."
She is the Chairperson of the Somaliland Meat Development Association, a local
organization that brings together up to 40 women and men in Somalia's semiautonomous region of Somaliland, located on the coast
of the Gulf of Aden.
The
treasure in bones
Every day, tens of thousands of
camels are slaughtered across Somalia - a country where meals are heavily
meat-driven. Tonnes of bones, hides, and hooves, among other culturally
undesirable parts, are discarded.
Under a United Kingdom-funded initiative, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization is encouraging
communities to earn more income by processing animal skins, making soap from bone marrow and
crafts from camel bones. The first
year of this initiative has shown surprising results.
"We have been trained how to
carefully cut fresh bones at both ends and extract the bone marrow, which we
boil and mix with caustic soda in a very simple process," said one project
trainee, describing the soap-making process. She used soap she produced barely
hours earlier to hand wash her white fabric. "It works perfectly
well," she added.
After two decades of war, drought
and underdevelopment, Somalia has almost no homegrown industries that produce
basic commodities like soap. In Somaliland, less affected by recent conflict,
the project represents a glimpse of hope and an example that the rest of the
country might follow.
Many things can be carved out of the
dense, hard camel bones. In the first year of the SEED programme, over 100 trainees have learned to make necklaces, bangles,
flower vases, beads, and combs among other products.
Upping
livestock value
Livestock in most parts of Somalia
are sold using visual appraisal. Sheep of local breeds weighing about 35-40 kg
can be sold at an equivalent price of $320-340. The Borana cattle breed, with
an estimated body weight of 400 kg, is sold at about $930. Camels, with an
estimated weight of 300 kg, are sold in the Middle East at about $820 per head.
Camels
are big business in Somalia, with a
general annual export value estimated at over $250 million. With SEED programme
enterprise activities, Somalia's domestic meat production is on the path of
realizing full value by exploiting what was hitherto waste. Dr Abdi Aw Dahir
Ali, Somaliland's livestock minister said when livestock bones are fully
utilized, by producing soap and crafts, the value of livestock increases
significantly.
"With soap and things like
crafts produced from livestock bones, we have seen the value of each animal, be
it goats, sheep or camel, go up by 30 to 60 percent and this is unprecedentedly
good for our people," said Dahir Ali. "These are the kinds of
activities we strongly believe will lift people out of the cycle of
poverty."
Soap and bone craft production are
slowly but surely launching into the Somali market. There now are plans to expand these ideas across Somalia, as means of creating more jobs and income in the war-torn
country. So far, 120 Somali youths, mostly young women have already been
trained and have started producing tonnes of soap and hundreds of necklaces,
spoons, combs and flower vases, which are sold locally.
Scaling
up SEED
Strengthening the Somali national
economy through development
of the livestock and fisheries sectors
is a key outcome of the UK-funded SEED Programme.
Joanna Reid, head of the UK's
Department for International Development (DFID) in Somalia, said that with
stable conditions in Somaliland and sufficient investment in the livestock
sector, there are hopes that its vibrant market economy will grow rapidly.
To bring revolutionary change in
these sectors, DFID has been working with FAO, UNDP, ILO and Save the Children
in a series of interventions. Following the completion of the first phase of
the SEED Programme in July 2012, phase two of the programme now seeks to create
thousands of sustainable jobs across Somalia.
"In Phase I, we have succeeded
in demonstrating that jobs and income can come from things like bones, which we
are scaling up in Phase II by expanding to areas like curing and tanning
leather from hides and skins, biogas and manure production," said Luca
Alinovi, FAO's Country Representative for Somalia
