Marula industry lying in wait

Namibia can look to Ghana for suggestions on how to make the most of its indigenous natural products, beyond the limited scope of individual communities.
This suggestion was made by suggests Maria Lisa Immanuel, senior trade and investment analyst with the Namibia Trade Forum (NTF), after comparing the Ghanaian use of the shea tree to that of Namibians extracting value from the marula tree.
“Shea butter is to Ghana what marula oil is to Namibia,” Immanuel says in making a case for better commercial use of marula products.
“The difference only comes in where Ghana has commercialised their shea butter into a million-dollar industry supporting close to 600 000 producers, whereas Namibia is struggling to leverage on the abundant availability of marula nuts in the country,” she says.
Suggesting at least five value chains to be established through optimal use of marula, she encourages government, the private sector and academia to consider the possibilities presented.
She says a marula industry can benefit the beverages, animal feed, cosmetics and food industries in various ways – using marula juice and its fermented form marula liquor, as well as the marula nuts and peels.
Explaining how the product is used at present, Immanuel says the marula nut is harvested when ripe, and the extracted juice is consumed mostly by children because of its sweet taste. Older people usually let the juice ferment two to three days, turning it into liquor, or Omaongo, as it is known in Oshiwambo.
“According to traditional knowledge, the marula liquor can be kept in the fridge for consumption up to six months,” Immanuel says.
“The shelf life is sufficiently long and could be one of the main reasons why it makes business sense to commercialise marula liquor in Namibia.”
Following the juice season, the marula nut is typically left to dry until it is ready to be cracked by a traditional method called ‘okutenda’.
“Women sit all day under a shade cracking the nuts open,” Immanuel says.
“This method could easily be mechanised to ensure efficiency in a production set-up,” she says, noting that the output from this effort is a white kernel called Omaxuku, which is further extracted to obtain marula oil.
This oil, she says, may prove commercially viable in the cosmetics industry, as well as by developing its status as a traditional delicacy at festivals and weddings.
“The Body Shop retailer procures marula oil as part of their ingredients from the Eudafano Women Cooperative based in the northern area. It can also be positioned as a niche product in the spa and wellness industry around the world,” she says.
A key challenge to developing marula industries on large scale, she says, is in jointly creating compliance standards for manufacturing, while respecting and protecting the indigenous knowledge and methods, as well as the communities meant to benefit from their use.
“In other words, how do you translate the marula oil into cosmetic products whereby both parties and everybody along the value chain benefits equally, and hence create a sustainable market,” she says.

DENVER ISAACS