‘Embrace local products first’

The launch of One Village One Product (Ovop) in 2003 brought excitement to many Malawians who anticipated that through value addition of products, they would break into the international market; Paida Mpaso speaks to Ovop national coordinator Kamia Kaluma Sulumba on the progress made since its inception.

What does Ovop do?

Ovop is a community-centred and demand driven economic empowerment programme. It aims at economically empowering Malawian communities through encouraging value addition to local products for the domestic as well as the international market

In which areas is Ovop working?

Ovop as a programme    is working in both agricultural and non-agricultural value addition. Currently, the programme is working with 150 groups in all the districts in the country except Likoma where we are yet to register a group.

Since its inception, what has the programme achieved?

Some of the major achievements of the programme include provision of technologies to various communities so that they add value to their local products: These include rice processing and packaging ready for the market; honey processing; lime making; potato crisp making; furthermore, the programme has been exporting some honey, baobab oil and baobab jam to Japan. We believe this a good starting point as it gives us indications as to how Ovop products are received in other countries and so far, the feedback we have is that Malawi honey is liked a lot in Japan as well as there being potential for baobab oil to be exported on a regular basis to Japan and other countries. Regionally, there has been a lot of interest expressed in such products as rice and cooking oil. Again, we feel this is an area we can exploit as regional trade is much easier to handle than overseas trade.

Enterprises complain that most companies shun local products and most Ovop groups are still failing to export products, what are you doing about this?

Firstly, Ovop is trying to address the issues of quality. Any buyer wants to get value for their money, so Ovop wants to give the market products that they will be happy to pay for. Ovop is working diligently with its partner groups as well as the Malawi Bureau of Standards and other associated institutions to ensure that the products from Ovop groups meet the customer requirements and that they are of high quality.

The issue of failure to export comes back to the issue of quality. As explained, we are working to ensure that Ovop products are of high quality and once this issue is dealt with then the export becomes secondary. You may wish to know that currently, Ovop is already exporting some of its products such as honey and baobab oil though in small quantities.

But Ovop has been in existence for many years, why is there slow progress? 

As an entity, we do face challenges and some of them include access to finance as you are aware, Malawi as an agro-based economy, most of Ovop activities are in the agriculture sector and this is seasonal, as such Ovop groups require enough resources to acquire raw material during harvesting period and this needs financing which is not readily available. Secondly, there is the issue of markets. A lot of Malawians like to buy imported products even where a local alternative of similar quality is available. Lastly, there is the Malawian mindset towards loan repayment. Most of the assistance that Ovop gives its members, especially in the area of equipment, is in the form of loans and most groups are reluctant to repay them. This retards the development of the programme as the little money that is available tends to be locked up with the few groups that accessed the loans early.

What plans do you have to further promote value addition in Malawi?

As Ovop, we plan on reaching on all areas in the country because we believe that each are has a product or service which they can identify and promote so as to be “trademark” for the area. We also plan to have as many Ovop products on the local market as possible before we go on an export campaign. We believe our products have to be accepted locally before we try to entice the export market. Having said that, we are not completely ignoring the export market, we are getting there slowly but at the moment we feel the domestic market should be our priority and we should ride on the Buy Malawi Campaign.