We can turn our mangoes into gold

Arab traders are believed to have introduced mangoes to this country in the 18th century. Since then the succulent, seasonal fruit has been grown in nearly all parts of Malawi, in countless varieties. There is not a single Malawian who can claim to be a stranger to mangoes. We have all gotten acquainted with the sweet taste of mangoes since our childhood days.

There is something peculiar about mangoes. You crave those that grow in somebody else’s orchard more than you do the ones in your own orchard. Growing up at Nkhoma Mission in the 1970s, I would not infrequently team up with other boys to sneak into the orchards of the white missionaries to pluck some mangoes. They obviously did not like it and sometimes would unleash their vicious dogs on us. This is a testament to the popularity of the ubiquitous fruit.

Mangoes are notoriously seasonal. They become available over a narrow window in the year. Those from the rift valley ripen first, hitting the city markets around October. By December, the rift valley mangoes give way to those from the upland areas. In almost every corner of Malawi, there will be some people selling mangoes between October and February. They will line up every major road to target the travelling public. Because mangoes become available in large quantities over a short period, the supply and demand laws drive down their prices quite significantly, giving no real chance to the vendors to cash in on the commodity.

This problem results from selling the commodity in its raw form. Value addition can greatly increase the mango vendors’ earnings.  Mangoes are a much sought after type of food the world over. This translates into a high demand for them globally. So far we have been unable to meet the global demand because there simply is no chance that raw mangoes can be transported to the global market. They are so highly perishable that they cannot survive the long trips to places like Dubai, despite having a ready market in such affluent places.

With proper packaging, the life of mangoes can be prolonged far beyond their natural life. The agent that makes fresh foods go bad quickly is oxygen. By using a blend of gases such as carbon dioxide and nitrogen, oxygen can be excluded from a sealed package, prolonging the life of the packaged fresh food. This technique is known as gas flushing or modified atmosphere packaging (map).

Value addition can also be achieved by chipping the mangoes and partly drying them. This can work if the mangoes only slightly ripen by the time they are picked and processed. Over the immediate past Christmas festivities a major Malawian bank was giving out mangoes processed in this manner to its highly valued customers. It is a technique that would probably be cheaper and easier to achieve that than would be modified atmosphere packaging.

If we had regular and reliable flights into Middle Eastern or European capitals, we would utilize the techniques describe above to engage in massive exportation of our delicious mangoes into these regions. Mangoes can be gold indeed. It is lamentable that, after depleting indigenous trees, people are now resorting to felling mango trees in order to get firewood for soil brick firing or for tobacco curing. In places like rural Lilongwe one can hardly find any mango trees now.

Recently I heard preacher say something to the effect that we ought to be able to offer a product or a service for God to bless us. God will not bless us in a vacuum. If you search within the circle of people who are regarded as affluent, you will discover that, without exception, they have, or have had, a product or a service, in many cases as multiplicity of these, to offer. Mansa Musa was a trader in salt and gold, Rockefeller in oil; Harry Oppenheimer is a diamond dealer; Elon Musk sells electric vehicles and space rockets while Aliko Dangote is a cement, fertiliser and now an oil magnate.

The same principle applies to countries. It is those countries that have products or services to offer that have become affluent. Gold built South Africa, for example. The local name for Johannesburg is Egoli, which means city of gold. Copper has made Zambia what it is now. If peace was achieved in the DRC, it would be one of the richest countries in Africa since it has an abundance of mineral and other natural resources. We do not have much to offer in Malawi but I am humbly submitting that we should consider turning our mangoes into gold.