RICE HUSKS: KARONGA’S NEW GOLDMINE
One’s waste is an entrepreneur’s goldmine. The business community in Karonga have risen to tap millions from ever-growing heaps of rice husks that many onlookers find disgusting. Mzuzu Bureau Supervisor JAMES CHAVULA writes.
Hills of husks. Stacks of bags. Trucks waiting for a turn. Money changing hands. The remains of Malawi’s sweet-smelling rice harvest might be disgusting waste to ordinary townspeople and onlookers, but some enterprising minds are fast turning the lingering mountains of husks into a lucrative money-spinning opportunity.
In the buzzing town bordering Tanzania, it is clear how the dust-enduring entrepreneurs are transforming the widespread heaps that have been piling for decades into a thriving multimillion kwacha business.
From the roadside, the money exchanging hands flashes into view. The humming machines shelling truckloads of rice Monday to Sunday. The customers take the grains and sell them at K5 000 (US$12) per 20-litre bucket just outside. On the other hand, the rice mills’ proprietors sell the husks at K60 000 (US$145) per 30-tonne truck. From the mill to the waiting trucks, there are tens of long-distance traders who hire hundreds of unemployed young Malawians as casual labourers to pack the once-despised powdery material into sacks and load them into trucks which haul the dispatch to livestock farms down souh in Chikhwawa and up north in Mbeya in neighbouring Tanzania.
“It’s harvesting time!” says mill operator Joseph Chawinga, who churns out about 10 tonnes of husks every day.
The Nation counted 15 rice mills in the uranium producing district—meaning Chawinga and company produce approximately five truck loads of husks every day.
“Onlookers usually blame the heaps as a blot on our lakeshore town, but the business-minded crowd have come to realise it is a big money-spinning opportunity and it is weaning over 1000 households from poverty, unemployment and crime.”
Chawinga is one of five rice mills situated opposite Karonga District Council offices. In the foreground of the buildings, are hills of husks standing aloft like miniatures of the pyramids of Egypt.
“Not all the husks go into the bags, but the fine type,” says Chawinga.
The traders primarily scramble for fine husks which they sell to cattle ranches, including the Mias of S&A Cold Storage and their Issa counterpart at Ngabu in Chikhwawa.
“It sells like hot cakes,” says businessperson Helen Makwakwa. “Our customers use it as ingredients for processing animal feed, a cheaper and nutritious alternative at a time livestock farming is becoming expensive.”
In an interview, S&A Cold Storage managing director Abida Mia confirmed making one’s own animal feed is cheaper and more reliable than ready-made options in shops.
“Our brother Ronald buys at least 30 tonnes of rice gaga every day. He mixes it with maize bran, molasses, salt, urea and other ingredients. The result is animal feed which is very affordable and nutritious,” said Mia on Monday, revealing they get truckloads of gaga from Mangochi, Zomba, Chikhwawa and other rice-growing parts of the country.
During the meeting, Makwakwa’s focus was on buying enough bags to fill a truck ready to take the trip to the ranches in the Shire Valley. Some export the goods to Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Mozambique.
“Every month I dispatch two 33-tonne trucks, but those with big capital get up to five,” says the mother-of-three.
Her business line is stark, but indicative of the chain of households earning a livelihood from the rice residues: The proprietors of the maize mill charge K60 000 for every 33-tonne truck.
For every truckload, the traders have to spend K45 000 (US$108) buying 300 sacks at K150, expend K60 000 (US$145) for the young men who pack the husks into the bags and others need K50 000 to load the bags into the trucks. They also pay up to K800 000 (US$1 928) to transport a truckload to Ngabu.
“The list of beneficiaries could be long and scary, but it is an investment worth taking. You cannot afford to stay idle because there is nothing for nothing,” says Makwakwa.
During the growing season, when the commodity is scarce, she sells her haul at K45 000. This accounts for K1.35 million per trip and K2.7 million for two.
With the unfolding harvest season, the heaps are mushrooming and the prices have tumbled to K36 000 per tonne.
At this rate, every 33-tonne truckload costs her K1.015 million and sells at K1.188 million—denoting about K200 000 in profits.
“Although the business is seasonal, it brings enough income. My children can afford three meals a day and decent dressing,” she says.
The majority of the businessperson on the rice mills’ premises comprise vulnerable women, including widows, single mothers and sex workers from poor background. Some of them say they started small as selling a bag or two at K1 000 each. They term their business line as flexible because it doesn’t require big capital.
“Most of us started with K10 000, which could only buy 20 bags which we sold at K1 000 each to the bigger traders right on the milling premises. We did not have to go anywhere,” says Ruth Tchuwa.
Within three years, Tchuwa has become one of the increasing number of export traders who sell the by-product of rice to Shilika Trading Centre in Tanzania.
“Across the border, a bag costs K3 500. The good thing is that Shilika is not far from Karonga, a distance nearly 15 times shorter than Ngabu or Blantyre,” says the businessperson.
A truck carrying about 300 bags would fetch about K1 million, but she urges low-income locals to come together and form cooperatives to start exporting more and beat mounting competition from big barons from both within and abroad who have infiltrated the emerging business.
The spirit of unity is manifest among the casual labourers who package the bags and load them into trucks. They work in groups of five or six to fill a truck. That way, they work faster, get more business and make more business. They load at least six trucks a week, they say.
The downside is that the majority of the casual workers are boys under 15 who are supposed to be in school.
Notwithstanding the flipside, a minefield for child labour and abuse of their rights, the trade is helping clean up Karonga—a lakeshore district well known for rice production.
Its wetlands are laced with rice schemes, including Hara, Wovwe, Ngerenge, Kaporo and Fuliwa. Travelling from Songwe Border and Hara in the South, rice mills with uncurbed mounds are a common sight. This hints at the extent of the waste management problem which presents lots of business opportunities.
Harry Mwanyembe—the owner of Nyembe Rice Mills at Karonga Boma, Uliwa and Hara—is the councillor for Rukuru Ward which encompasses Karonga town centre.
In an interview, the councillor squarely confronted the gaping challenge: “Despite several years of impressive rice-growing in the district, the district council has no capacity to eliminate the heaps of husks piling at their doorstep.”
According to him, a tractor the council set aside for refuse collection broke down three years ago and a substitute hired from Karonga Agricultural Development Division (Kradd) has failed to keep the rice mills’ area clean.
The alternative arrangement requires owners of mills to buy fuel for the tractor and pay driver’s allowances, he said. The practice of subsidising the costs has proved a major setback for those who think clearing the husks is a drain on their capital and profits.
He explained: “Apart from selling the gaga, we, as rice mills’ owners, are happy seeing the traders clearing the piles and making money from it. Actually, the business is also empowering vulnerable populations with decent sources of income, leaving them with little or no time to engage in risky behaviour likely to lead to HIV infections.”
However, the gaps in waste management and the scale of the problems surrounding it have been apparent for nearly two decades.
At the rice mills facing Karonga District offices, there are a number of encounters that should shock residents and visitors who want to see filthy towns become spotlessly clean.
From the road, the milling sites can be seen standing in the shadow of mounds of husks that pierce the sky like miniatures of historic pyramids of Egypt. To get there, visitors are waving away dusty husks whirling in the air. Besides the disturbing sniffs and spills, there bags of husks waiting to be transported away.
What could easily have passed for residues are no longer losses
Karonga has assimilated a great deal of lifestyles from Tanzania. Perhaps the most vivid is ‘biya shala’, a Swahili catchphrase which is always on the tongues of entrepreneurs.
Karonga Youth Entrepreneurs (Kaye) executive director John Ndaki Banda sums up the emerging spirit as “money first, anything later.”
But Paramount Chief Kyungu’s principal aide Mboma, whose influence spreads to Ngondes and Nyakyusas in the neighbouring country, says biya shala is bigger than just business.
“Primarily, biya shala means minimising losses. In any business, even rice production, there is no room for losses,” says the custodian of culture.
In line with the spirit, Banda’s group, which brings together 120 jobless young Malawians, is working on a briquette-making business model which promises to support the traders efforts to minimise losses from rice.
The business blueprint got a boost last week when Technical Entrepreneurial and Vocational Education and Training Authority (Teveta) trained 20 young people in how to mould briquettes from the rough husks the business community shuns.
Briquettes are tyre-like bricks the size of a pan-cake or bigger which is made from compacted leaves, paper, maize stalks, grass or any other organic material. Environmentalists hail the technology as a sustainable substitute for firewood and charcoal, the widely used fuel options often blamed for wanton cutting down of trees.
“In line with our dream to create job creators—not job-seekers—we envisage pooling our skills and resources to produce 6 000 briquettes per day, which roughly translates into K300 000 per week,” says Banda.
Tevet Authority regional services centre manager Conceptor Bamusi terms the jobless group’s model “a shining example of entrepreneurship” and Karonga Opportunity Bank relationship officer Morson Mhone says the door is open for the youth to acquire loans for their dream project.
“Entrepreneurship is about seeing opportunities where many see none, having the courage to properly place yourself in the circuit of money-making and harnessing the innovation to make people bring you lots of money by addressing their needs,” he says.
Like the emergent youth empowerment group, the traders are living up to the vital E which distinguish Tevet authorities in Malawi and Zambia from the rest of technical and vocational training worldwide.
